The Beauty Queen and the Blogger

It's all right to offend conservatives. Whatever your reason is, they probably deserve it. Anyone else is off limits, though; or you're a hate-monger, you're a racist, you're un-american--and if you're Perez Hilton, you're a dumb b****.

Just about everyone's heard about the Miss America peagant scandal. How can you not? The latest to weigh in on this issue is the director of Miss California USA Pageant officials. They released the following statement: "We are deeply saddened Carrie Prejean has...[gone] beond the right to voice her beliefs and instead reveals her opportunistic agenda."

For a re-cap, here is her response, verbatim: "In my country--In my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised, and that's how I think it should be--between a man and a woman."

That doesn't sound to me like she's got an opportunistic agenda. She definitely has an opinion on the matter, but she's being respectful and we know where she stands on the issue, and she doesn't go into any details.

There are two things going on here. The first, and most obvious, is that the pageant officials are trying to distance themselves any way they can from Prejean's response. The subtext, however, is one of excoriating rebuke.

I have to wonder. Would the Miss California panel be equally outraged if Prejean had responded that she was for gay marriage? Most likely not. There is a double-standard out there. People talk about tolerance and acceptance, but in reality they mean tolerance and acceptance according to a specific point of view. To go contrary to an opinion that the media dubs as "approproiate" is considered hateful, narrow-minded, bigoted, and un-american. To illustrate my point, remember actor Tom Hanks' remarks, when he recently accused The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of being "un-american" for supporting California's Proposition 8. The LDS church's response was very short and to the point: there is nothing more American than being able to exercise your freedom of speech and stand up for what you believe in. I think the Miss America pageant is the perfect forum for Prejean's response, whatever her opinion was on the matter.

Power to you, girl! Well played.

But here's something else to consider, who vetted these questions? I hear people everywhere saying, "the Miss America pageant was not the proper forum for that sort of response." Well if that were true then why was that question approved to begin with? I'll ask again, would these same people think her response equally inappropriate if Miss Prejean said that she supported gay marriage?

That one, dear reader, I'll leave for you to decide.

There you have it. From me to you, straight from the forge.