Once again, a beauty pageant model is brought to task for “bad behavior” and nude photos. This time, the woman is Carrie Prejean, a Miss California, and target of Perez Hilton. The photos exist, but we’ll probably never see them, because she was 17 when they were taken. Big deal. I’m going back and forth on who I don’t like and who I just don’t care about:
1) Perez Hilton is an annoying idiot who suddenly claims some kind of political relevancy?
2) Some 21 year old bimbo can’t walk a political tight-rope?
3) Beauty contest are basically displaying and rating female flesh, with a patina of respectability, and yet trashing the ones who’ve shown a millimeter more flesh?
I want to say, lay off the girl. And I would, if she had gone back home, quietly stating that she didn’t think her beliefs should matter in a beauty contest. But she didn’t, she signed on with “National Organization for Marraige”. National Organization for Marraige is the worst kind of hate group, it goes all emo over people disagreeing with it. Hating minorities and disempowered groups is a long-standing tradition in this country. Probably in any country. Our high schools are still permeated with it. But the bullies used to at least have the guts to be consistent. NOM is part of a new movement among conservatives. They spew hate. When they get a negative reaction, they act injured. Victimized. It’s pathetic.
So at least I have one bad guy in the mix. I hate NOM. Not for being bullies, not for perverting religion to their own hate, but for being all emo. And I can give up my sympathy for Carrie Prejean because she signed on with them. But still, digging up nude pictures from when she was seventeen? Sure, it proves she isn’t absolutely morally pure, but that has never been the position the evangelicals take. They all flirt with with sin, and if they get caught over the line, they repent. It’s practically required.
I started out being mad at Perez Hilton. That’s easy, because I’ve never liked him. He can be funny, but mostly he’s cruel in a kind of “I can say whatever I want and then act harmless” way. And, what kind of person tries to trip up beauty queens with complex moral questions? That’s like Kramer beating up the third-grade Karate class. But then I asked myself: Who picked him as a judge? The same person who thought Roseanne Barr should sing the National Anthem? What, exactly, did they expect?
I guess what I really hate is the politico-entertainment-industrial-complex. It’s this machine that delivers something like Carrie Prejean through talk shows, commentators, entertainment shows, and the internet as if she can really be the focus of an important national debate. These are the people who filled our living room with Joe the Plumber. And the problem is, they guys on my side are as in on it, as guilty as the guys on the other side. Bill O’Rielly, Keith Olberman, both eat this stuff up. Each from his own moral high ground, but they both let a 21-year-old bimbo become the focus of their respective wrath/understanding.