The issue for the umpteenth time is and never has been about whether Carrie Prejean violated the dumb, probably legally challengeable, and possibly legally winnable Miss California contract she signed. The two supposedly most glaring offending sections of the contract that Prejean allegedly sloughed off state that a Miss winner can't appear in a lewd, compromising, and sexually suggestive manner and that the pageant has exclusive right and control over all Miss's personal appearances.
The first clause is laughable. Compare the picture of Prejean in the skimpy bikini that she pranced around the stage in and the supposedly illicit picture, a picture which by the way that was taken ages before she or the pageant ever heard of each other, that rocketed around the internet of her in her pink drawers. Then decide which is the most lewd, compromising and sexually suggestive.
The second clause that gives the pageant the right to control any and all of her personal actions is dubious. The compelling words in the clause are "to me." The clause is there to make sure that Miss California doesn't rake in any cash or engage in any commercial promotional ventures or talent appearances that don't line the pockets of the pageant organizers. Plugging a message for a religious group hardly fits that bill. A message in which she expressed a belief that the world has heard and every one else has by now heard. The contract, though, gave the pageant wheels just enough of a legal cover they hunger for to dump her.
None of this changes the hard fact that the effort to boot her is about a beauty pageant winner who was asked about and then dared to speak her mind on one of the most polarizing, and divisive issues of the day, namely marriage between a man and a woman. The question smacked of being a set-up question if there ever was one. The political thought police earmarked for excision before the last of those ill fated words fell from her lips in response. The Prejean saga is also about a beauty pageant winner who innocently and inadvertently exposed the silly and hypocritical charade that beauty pageant sponsors delight in pawning off and that's that brains and talent trump a pretty face and bod.
Prejean's honesty in stating her marriage beliefs violate the most sacred canon of politically correct policing, and that is that anything that an advocacy group deems that smacks of their interpretation of bigotry must be swiftly and harshly banned in Boston. There is no room for debate or discussion. To defend Prejean against this view has absolutely nothing to do with agreement or disagreement with her views. This writer has written a Mt. Everest stack of articles, commentaries, and backed countless protest actions opposing Prejean's narrow view of marriage and gay rights.
But the fight against her views has never been waged by mounting a systematic and relentless hit below the belt, ad hominen, sneaky, back door campaign of character assassination, mud slinging, and lies. A campaign against her that even included a dim witted, juvenile delinquent effort at a Freudian analysis of the bedroom battles of the woman's divorced parents to explain her.
With or without her beauty crown, Prejean is an ad person's and a religious fundamentalist dream, in fact several dreams. She's young, photogenic, gutsy, and articulate. She can be spun as the imperfect soul who found redemption through a cause she believed in even when it meant kissing off the vapid glitter, glamour, and fortune of the beauty celebrity life.
To her backers, Prejean stands as the beauty queen who is more than just another pretty grinning face, sex commodity. She stands tall as the beauty queen who refused to be hacked up on the altar of political correctness. That's the Miss California that the beauty pageant and the hate on Prejean crowd unwittingly created.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, "The Hutchinson Report" can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles at 9:30 AM PST on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and nationally on blogtalkradio.com