The Luv Doc: Ask the Muleskinner

Dear Luv Doc,

Through a variety of strange circumstances, my boyfriend’s ex (two years) now works for the same international tech company I work for. He blocked her on social media long before we started dating, so although we interact occasionally at work, she doesn’t know I am with her ex. Initially I thought we might get along, but after several months of working with her I can totally understand why they broke up. She is attractive, but her looks are overshadowed by her neurotic need to be the center of attention no matter what the scenario. She will interrupt private conversations in the hallway to talk about her fabulous weekend. She regularly speaks up in meetings for no apparent reason, even though she rarely has anything constructive or relevant to say. She talks way too loudly for an office environment. All of this was amusing to me until last Friday when I was told by a co-worker that she claimed to have come up with a sales initiative that was my idea that my team had presented in another meeting. I am a straightforward person, so the next time I saw her I asked her why she had claimed the idea as hers. She made a lame excuse about how she felt it was really both our teams’ idea because we had “fleshed it out together.” Literally a few seconds after she said that my boyfriend called, so I said “We can talk about this later” and went to take the call. He was calling to ask me to lunch. At lunch I told him about the whole thing and he said that I should let it go because she is a nutjob and might end up making my life as miserable as she did his. He may be right, but I can’t stand the thought of letting her win, even though I know the idea I had isn’t some big, game-changing thing. So what do you think? Should I call her out to her boss or let it go?  – Anonymous New Girlfriend Embraces Revenge

You remember the scene in Little Big Man when General George Armstrong Custer asks the muleskinner – aka ”Jack Crabb,” aka the eponymous “Little Big Man,” to give his assessment of the danger posed by the large number of Cheyenne and Lakota braves in valley below them? What does Little Big Man tell him? Wait ... what? You haven’t even seen the movie? Dear God, how are we going to move forward as a nation if we don’t share the same cultural touchstones? OK, instead of getting tangled up in the weeds trying to explain the cultural importance of the aforementioned 1970 Arthur Penn classic – which, by the way, is arguably at the same time either Dustin Hoffman’s best or worst work – I will save us both some time and say the correct answer is: “You go down there.”

More importantly, in that response Little Big Man is telling G.G.A.C. the truth, which is exactly what the general doesn’t want to hear. The Muleskinner is baiting Custer into a slaughter, because, without getting too specific, the general is a huge dick. Is this scene a metaphor for America’s hubristic involvement in Vietnam? Probs. The Penta­gon Papers surely put a dot on that “i” the following year in 1971 – the same year that Chief Dan George, who played “Old Lodge Skins” in the film, became the first Indigenous person to be nominated for an Academy Award. He took an “L” just like Lily Gladstone, but his story has a happy ending because in 1976 Chief Dan George co-starred in the greatest Western of all time, The Outlaw Josey Wales. You don’t need to look it up. You can just trust me on that.

Where I’m going with all this cinematic rambling is that, given his relative depth of experience with your adversary, you should probably trust your boyfriend in this instance. Sure, you might win this battle, but you also might start a very ugly war. You don’t want that – especially since this woman has proven to be mentally unbalanced, as your boyfriend predicted. I say step back, take a deep breath, and be grateful that even though it might seem like you’re losing, the truth is on your side, and truth always wins in the long run. Don’t go down there.