Pretty Little Isms

In order to forestall any potential controversy which may arise from Pretty Lady's idle musings, let it be stated up-front that Pretty Lady is exceedingly racist. She is also elitist, classist, sexist, and homophobic. This said, she is not particularly prejudiced in favor of White Male Patriarchs, either; she is disposed to regard most complete strangers with a hefty dose of jingoistic suspicion. Pretty Lady, in fact, is a veritable monolithic amalgamation of stereotyping, pigeonholing, bigotry, and ignorance. She admits these facts freely and without shame.

Horribly, it is also true that Pretty Lady rather likes herself. She rather likes other people, too. The other people she likes tend to be a colorful lot. They Run The Gamut, in fact. Pretty Lady likes extremists, moderates, left-wingers, right-wingers, gay people, straight people, confused people, religious people, atheists, agnostics, liberals, conservatives, black people, white people, brown people, men, women, children, bigots, racists, sinners and saints. As a partial and highly incomplete list.

The people she doesn't like--if she may get confessional about it--fall into two rough categories. The first, of course, is Evil People, whom are not the topic under discussion today--the Alpha cat had a nasty attack of diarrhea this morning, and it reminded Pretty Lady all too clearly of her look down a festering sewer of...well, let us leave that alone.

The second category was inspired by a lengthy and poetic diatribe by La Belle Dame. Althought Pretty Lady did not understand many of the references, not being one to embroil herself in endless, circular bouts of name-calling (owning up to all the Names herself), she extracted a nugget of wisdom which perfectly expressed her ongoing feelings upon a certain issue.

What I can't stand is incuriosity.

Because if you're not even interested in the Other Person, then how can you possibly expect to be genuinely empathetic? You can't. Instead, you end up playing "let's pretend."

Ah! Pretty Lady was astounded. There it is! So clearly articulated! So simple! The source of the vast majority of her Extreme Discomfort around certain individuals.

Now, darlings, let it be known that if you are reading this, Pretty Lady is not speaking to you. Indeed, she feels profoundly fortunate to know so many deep, fascinating, wondrously Engaged persons. Not for Pretty Lady's friends, the endless, solipsistic spinnings, the hurling of ill-considered epithets, the knee-jerk defensiveness, the unexamined inner conviction that it's All About Them. No, Pretty Lady's elite group of associates will have none of that. They go in for ruminative fireside chats, perspicacious observations, whimsical asides, and a rather conspicuous lack of interest in deciding Who is Racist, Sexist, Elitist, Homophobic, or a Bad Person.

Because Pretty Lady's elite, wise friends know, from wry experience, that all of us are a bit like that. It is part of our fallen nature. We have resigned ourselves to being the incomplete and imperfect souls that we are, and, in awakened curiosity and humility, we go forth to remedy a small portion of our ignorance.