The Miss USA pageant might be a blip on our TV radar amongst shows like 30 Rock and Dancing with the Stars (my personal favorites), but the annual show definitely got our attention this year.
Kristen Dalton, the reigning Miss North Carolina, won the title of Miss USA, but her squeaky-clean performance is really nothing to write home about. Instead, all eyes are on the first runner-up. Miss California, formerly known as Carrie Prejean, made QUITE the stink at this year’s awards ceremony.
Let’s back-track for a second. During the November 2008 Presidential election, the notorious Proposition 8 was passed in the state of California, which basically criminalized the marriage of same-sex couples. Just a few months later, random states like Iowa and Vermont were going off and legalizing gay marriage. This begs two different questions: a) what is going ON with California?, and b) what does gay marriage have to do with the “Miss USA” show?
I can’t really answer the first question, but I can certainly shed some light on the second inquiry! Gay marriage is clearly a huge issue these days, and it seems like even the “Miss USA” contestants can’t escape it. One of the judges at this year’s show was celebrity blogger (and my personal role model) Perez Hilton. When Perez asked Miss California about her thoughts on gay marriage, she answered:
“I think it's great Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land that you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And you know what 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 there, but that's how I was raised and that's how I think it should be, between a man and a woman.”
Uh-oooh. Was she reading directly from a passage of Proposition 8? Really, “opposite marriage”? Sounds like something a kindergartener might say.
Perez didn’t try very hard to conceal his look of utter disgust at Prejean’s answer, nor did the other people in the (live) audience who booed the beauty queen. Needless to say, Prejean didn’t win, but she did manage to land herself in second-place. But it doesn’t stop there! In a follow-up interview, Miss California said that she will pray for the blogger, who is openly gay.
Ah, California, the epicenter of contradiction. While the “Golden State” can boast of producing such fabulous celebrities as singer Joni Mitchell and Sacha Baron Cohen (of “Borat” fame) it seems a little ironic that it could also bring us Proposition 8 and Miss Carrie Prejean. Oh, and Harvey Milk, one of the country’s most famous gay politicians/advocates, was from San Francisco. What is going on here?
I guess you can argue that Miss California is entitled to her opinions (and that Perez should have omitted some nasty choice words from his blog post), but it seems that some people just really need to schooled on some Political Correctness 101.
