The inappropriateness of the Miss USA Pagent.

I watched the Miss USA contest the other night, where Judge Perez Hilton (gossip blogger) asked Miss California, Carrie Prejean, if she believed that all of the states should allow same sex marriage. You can watch that here.
Miss Prejean gives a nervous and somewhat sloppy answer, but she generally says that she is happy people have a choice, but that she personally believes that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

You can see Perez Hilton rip into Carrie here and here.

Now on his video blog, Perez gives the alternate answer that he would have liked to hear, about state’s rights, which was actually a pretty decent answer and one I think I would have tried to come up with myself.

Nonetheless, the whole thing is just icky. First of all, I’m wondering what qualifies Perez Hilton to be a judge at the Miss USA contest in the first place. Mr. Pete said it was like asking a cat person to judge a dog show.

Secondly although Mr. Hilton said that Miss California alienated “thousands of Americans.” Of course if she had answered any differently she would have alienated the other “thousands of Americans.” I think his question was inappropriate for the pageant. I thought this was supposed to be PG-rated, family t.v., escapism for the common folk during a long and brutal recession. We know the country is divided on … well just about everything. Do we really need to have us slapped back into reality during a beauty pageant?

The aftermath of this has been ugly as well. Perez Hilton called Carrie Prejean stupid, a bigot and a bitch, and then said he wanted to call her a c*** (because liberals always have to attack with ad hominems and hate speech). He said it wasn’t because she disagreed with him, but rather because her answer was divisive. So for giving a sloppy, nervous answer she deserves all of insults? I don’t think so. He’s clearly mad at her for not embracing his ideology on stage at the Miss USA pageant.

But he isn’t the only judge saying so. Here judge Alicia Jacobs reveals that their final score was supposed to reflect their impressions of the entire pageant with some weight given to the final question. However she used the final question alone to totally punish Carrie Prejean.

“My final ranking for Miss California was 4th runner-up…& if I could have made her 51st runner-up, I would have.”

So what does this say to conservative, Christian young women competing in the Obama era? It says that your views will be persecuted, you will suffer consequences, and it may keep you from reaching your goals. And I think if it can play out in public like this, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it happen in the real world as well.

The upside is that I know who Carrie Prejean is. I still don’t know the name of the girl who won Miss USA.

Please browse my eBay items!
Visit my new Amazon Store!