Thursday, November 09, 2006

There is such a thing as a stupid question.

I was watching the Today show this morning and I saw Dustin Hoffman talking to Matt Lauer about a question he and his artsy friends used to ponder. The question is what would you do if you were in the Louve and it caught on fire and you could either chose to save the Mona Lisa or a stray cat? You can’t save them both, and you can’t say, ‘Screw it – I’d just beat it the hell outta there.’ You have to pick one. Then Hoffman said that the correct answer, or at least the P.C. answer, is to say that you’d pick the cat. Besides the fact that it’s the dumbest question I’ve ever heard, as far as I’m concerned if the correct answer is to save the cat, then it is also the dumbest answer I have ever heard.

Don’t get me wrong. I love animals. And I love cats. I’d be the crazy ‘cat lady on the corner’ if I didn’t worry about it ruining my love life. And I’m not cool with killing animals all willy-nilly. I say a prayer for the soul for every spider I am forced to kill. But if I had to choose between a one of a kind piece of art that is hundreds of years old and a stray cat, that cat would be toast. Literally.

What does that say about me as a person? And which would you pick?