Color Me Extremely Dubious

The New Pillar of Gentility. Y'right.

I see where Madonna is doing her Mary Magdalene shtick again.

Not too long ago, I came across the eldest Llama-ette reading one of Madonna's children's books. I think I was visibly appalled, which was extremely confusing for the gel because she has no earthly idea who Madonna is, yet was thoroughly enjoying the book. (It turned out that the book was on her Brownies reading list and that she'd checked it out from the library.)

Forbidding her from reading the book struck me as rather preposterous since, from what I gather, the thing is pretty harmless in and of itself. At the same time, I was not at all interested in encouraging her to buy into what one might call the Madonna Empire since I disapprove of that woman intensely.

We wound up having a long talk about reputations. Without going into detail, I told her that Madonna had done a great many greedy, selfish and awful things in her past and, because of this, I didn't really believe that she was writing children's books now because she had suddenly become good and respectable. "Oh," said the gel, "You mean she's writing them just to get even more money?" Probably yes, I replied. And even if she really is good now, it's terribly hard for anyone to truly believe it. And that, I said, sneakily inserting the lesson, is why your reputation is such a very important thing.

Hey, that's me. Mr. Bourgeoisie.

Anyhoo, we left it that she could borrow the book from the library but that I wasn't going to buy a copy of it. I think this was a reasonable compromise.