If the clip of the former Miss California being interviewed by Matt Lauer that Gawker has posted is any indication, it looks like Carrie Prejean has taken the first page right out of Sarah Palin's playbook: blame a conspiracy of "liberal intolerance" for her own pigheadedness.
I generally do not care about the trials and tribulations of former beauty pageant contestants (except as they threaten to hold national office), but I'm gonna drop a few lines on this one, because I'm sick to death of right-wingers playing the "you suppressed my right to speak out!!!1!" card.
From looking at the clip, the story she tells about her firing seems plausible enough, that Keith Lewis, the Executive Director of the Miss California USA Organization, didn't have an airtight story about why he showed her the door. (But see note 1.)
On the other hand, her whining about "tolerance needs to be a two-way street" cuts no mustard with me. Imagine, for example, that instead of her saying (and doubling down on, repeatedly) that she's against same-sex marriage, she had said she's against blacks marrying whites. Or Jews marrying Christians. Or gringos marrying Mexicans. There's no doubt that the overwhelming majority of people, today, would consider such such statements hateful and unacceptable. This is true despite for how long those taboos were embraced in the past -- we have grown, albeit slowly and painfully, as a society. Same thing with same-sex marriage: in another couple of decades at most, the few remaining people who agitate against it will by and large be dismissed as bigots.
What's going on here, maybe, if we stipulate that Prejean is telling the truth about not screwing up in some other way, is that Lewis is slightly ahead of the curve of mainstream America (or Real America™), and feels that Prejean's attitude is just as reprehensible as those other anti-equality statements would have been, whether personally, as someone in charge of a corporate identity, or both.
If so, big deal. That's life in the business world, Carrie, same as it was for Michael Phelps getting his picture snapped while doing a bong. Or, closer to your home, same as with a former Miss USA, Vanessa Williams, posing for what used to be considered racy pictures. When your entire job is to be an image, tarnish is all-important.
So, here's the first thing: Carrie Prejean is being dishonest by conflating market forces responding to public sensitivities, and/or an employer being a strong proponent of civil rights, with the government restricting her Constitutional right to spout bigotry. She can say whatever she wants and not go to jail for it, but the First Amendment says nothing at all about other people having to suffer her doing it from their podium, on their dime.
Here's the second thing: That whole interview with Matt Lauer was a blatantly obvious part of her ongoing effort to build her cred with the conservative Christian base. Catch the end of the clip, where you can see that she remembers just in the nick of time to get the all-important "blessed" and "prayers" in there. She is already one of the darlings of the perpetually aggrieved, and she's just about going to be able to write her own wingnut welfare checks for the foreseeable future.
So, four letters, Carrie: STFU.
Whoops. Didn't mean to suppress your right to free speech there.
(h/t: TBogg)
Notes:
[1] A quick look around makes me think there is more substance to Lewis's story than I had originally heard. This article, for example, lists specific appearances Prejean supposedly turned down, whereas in the clip I just watched, she said Lewis wouldn't give specifics. Whatever. My main point doesn't change.
[Added] The smoking email trail (via, via). While the point of this post still stands, I think it's now beyond dispute that Prejean was fired for cause. Note that the original source is Fox News, so there's really no whining about this being part of the gay-libtard agenda.
So, add a third thing on top of the other two things I concluded above -- she's flat-out lying about this situation. Or at least, she's seriously deluded.
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