If It Looks Like a Duck and Quacks Like a Duck...

I won't go into much detail about why this title strikes me as funny...perhaps because it's been an theme in my life more than once.

I've never been one to stand by and let someone I know and admire get hurt, and recently such an event happened. It didn't matter that I'd never met her in person, because the fact remains, I know the details of her life better than I know some of my own best friends in real life.

But nothing -- nothing -- pisses me off more than watching a friend get hurt over the gossip of another. The fact that the perpetrator of this crime actually puts herself in a position of true insincerity and duplicitousness and calls it "wit" and "harmless" makes it even more appalling, especially when considering the vulnerability of the victim.

I'm in the middle of reading Charles Dickens' classic A Tale of Two Cities, and in it he talks about a Monsier who willingly lets his nephew face a trial with the possible outcome being "drawing and quartering" (an all too recent method of execution), and who himself believes he has a right to the privilige of class and distinction, purely because he was born to it. Little does he know that the French Revolution is about to occur, and the lovely chateau he calls home is on the verge of being sacked and burned to the ground as the angry "little people" get their vengeance.

People are only leaders if you let them be. It's really a matter of silence and complicity that allows most people to hold any power at all.

When you step up -- speak your mind -- and not allow the tyrants of the world remain tyrants, it does amaze me that they often are surprised to learn that they are viewed in such a light.

But the quacking and noise I heard from this woman was as simple as the sheep who followed her.

I simply pronounce her a duck.

Quack.