Carrie Prejean: bits and pieces from the media

These are just snippets from the first four links on yahoo news related to Prejean. I didn't look for bad stuff. These are just lines cut and pasted from the first four sites you're directed to if you want to read about Miss California:

"Remember Carrie Prejean, disgraced anti-gay marriage pageant broad...how long before we learn that Carrie's dad was sucking off the local preacher at prayer retreats? I mean, can't you just feel that one coming?"

"All homophobes are secretly gay or have parents who are secretly gay."

"ABC News: Valerie Vetrano, an openly gay sales rep from Corona, Calif., claims she had a lesbian relationship with Prejean's mom, Francine Coppola."

"now we know why the girl has a problem with g a y s, she tramatized by Mommy switching horses in midstream"

"So what? That's her mother, not her." "Still shows the HYPOCRISY in her family!"

"Self-proclaimed bible thumper Miss California, Carrie Prejean, should start pointing the finger at herself for her own indiscretions. TheDirty.com has received exclusive images of the homophobic debutante that would clearly strip her of her Miss California crown." (Note: the purported "topless!!!" photos being described show her unclad back, a shot one routinely sees of women on the cover of Vanity Fair or Esquire. But they make HER a hypocritical porn queen.)

Huffington: " Miss California Means No Offense When She Says You Should Be Put To Death"

Huffington 2: "Miss California Trying to Redefine Traditional Breasts for the Rest of Us. Miss California, you may find full civil equality for all Americans to be "unnatural" and not "Biblically correct," but, frankly, neither are your Jugs for Jesus and your Caps for Christ."

"Bragging bible thumpers are always exempt (in their mind) from their hypocritical behavior as they throw stones at others in disgust and the spirit of unforgiveness."

"She's against being silenced. That's fine. But, at the same time, she wants to legally prevent same-sex marriage. That sounds to me like the silencing of others that you disagree with. Is this a little bit hypocritical?" ( :wtf:)

"Miss CA Carrie Prejean's Mother a Secret Lesbian?" "This is too splendid to be true."

--

Prejean's original comment that made her public enemy number one: "I think it's great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And you know what? I think 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."

Her response to the media attempt to destroy her: My comments defending traditional marriage have led to intimidation tactics that seek to undermine my reputation and somehow silence me and my beliefs, as if opinion is only a one-way street.

"I am a Christian, and I am a model. Models pose for pictures, including lingerie and swimwear photos. Recently, photos taken of me as a teenager have been released surreptitiously to a tabloid website that openly mocks me for my Christian faith.

"I am not perfect, and I will never claim to be. But these attacks on me and others who speak in defense of traditional marriage are intolerant and offensive. While we may not agree on every issue, we should show respect for others' opinions and not try to silence them through vicious and mean-spirited attacks."

--

I'll just add, I watched "Best Week Ever" last night and it included the most savage and stupid and vile attacks on this girl, it literally made it hard for me to get to sleep last night. I am just sickened by this.

had a Lesbian affair why does that make Carrie a hypocrite.? The logic seems to be lacking there.

Joe, at the risk of sounding trite and simplistic, I suggest you might consider limiting what you watch. I believe some Roman Catholic theologian talks about "custody of the eyes.". I followed one link on my browser page about Prejean and the talk at the Syracuse forum and on lindisfare and that was more than enough. One of the best decisions I made was to give up looking at T.V. except for an occasional thing on P.B.S. T.V. and media are tools. Right now they are tools in the hands of some very unsavory people who, IMO, are getting a boost from unseen powers and principalities. I have lot of trouble sleeping. But you're not having mid-life hormonal problems. You don't need to stay up for that kind of garbage.

Take care of yourself. Really.

and I think I'm done with Best Week Ever. But I also think the kind of violent, crude bullying is so offensive that it could make people of good will rethink whether this is really some MLK Jr style civil rights movement or whether it's perhaps something more sinister.

on the Syracuse forum, some time ago I was in favor of gay marriage. I know some very great people in ministry who are gay-some of whom are in civil unions. I also know a fine couple who had to leave the country because they couldn't be married here. The husband (because they are now married in Canada) was from another country which complicated the issue. In that particular case I think there should have been an exception made, yet if there was across the board civil unions this couple would have been able to stay here too. However, this kind of unrelenting bullying and viciousness from Prop 8 in California pushed me to the other side-along with some other concerns. I think marriage is a privlege, not a right and shouldn't be given to people who suggest that people who disagree with them should be killed. I actually think quite a few gay people have no interest in marriage (Elton John says the term has too much baggage and he's glad that he's in a civil union). They think it is an oppressive, heterosexual institution. I also think that for a number of gays marriage is not the issue. It's too stick it to the churches and "traditional istitutions and mores as with what you mentioned about NH. Not only do clergypeople and churches have to accept gay marriage, but we have to approve it and churches should have to perform marriages. I be darmed if people are going to tell me that I have to perform a marriage of anybody-gay or straight. In England things are even get more restrictive in that you're not even allowed to make jokes about gays. Good thing it's not retroactive or Benny Hill and some of the people in Monty Pythgon would be up on charges.


I also think we are headed towards totalitarianism under the great of shining symbol of "hope and change", but that's another issue.

everyone is entitled to their opinion as long as it's the right one, or in this case the pc one

What started to shift my thinking was reading in my husband's Columbia magazine about what was happening to Catholic adoption services in states where gay marriage was legal. I also read some columns by a gay writer who really opposes gay marriage. Those concerns informed my vote on Prop 8, but then the aftermath solidified my position in a way that it hadn't really been solidified before.


Joe's point is a good one:

VicarJoe wrote: But I also think the kind of violent, crude bullying is so offensive that it could make people of good will rethink whether this is really some MLK Jr style civil rights movement or whether it's perhaps something more sinister.

I've started to look more closely at the too. I think like a lot of people my age, I hate to feel like I'm on the wrong side of a civil rights issue--just me, the KKK, and Prop H8! But I'm starting to realize how that eagerness to do right is being exploited and manipulated by a movement that is clearly not[i] MLK's civil rights movement. And yeah, it does start to seem a bit sinister, at least from where I'm sitting.

By evoking the civil rights movement of the sixties as its spiritual forefather, this movement tries to analogize its way into acceptance. You and I don't want to be Bull Connor or George Wallace. So we're supposed to just get on board and not ask questions. It does exploit the earlier movement, while behaving nothing like it whatsoever. Perez Hilton is no Ralph Abernathy. There's no "Letter from Birmingham Jail," and there won't be. It will just be that anyone who agrees with the majority will be labeled an extremist and controversial, and the media will pursue that person like sharks in a feeding frenzy, looking for anything at all that can be used to humiliate and dismiss the person. They'll turn anything, even the most harmless thing, into another "scandal" and comment on how this person just can't seem to escape controversy. (They won't mention the obvious fact that the "scandal" and "controversy" are media-produced, and that the reason the person can't escape controversy is because the media has condemned the person and will not let up.) And they won't let up till the person is destroyed.

But we'll have learned from it to be quiet, not to speak. We'll be afraid of being savaged, so we'll go along. Anyone who shares our concerns who speaks publicly will be burnt at the media stake, and we'll learn again to not say anything.

but, while I wouldn't say I've been completely silenced, I'm really really careful about voicing my opinion. And it has a lot to do with the way things play out in exactly the terms you describe. So when I walk past a colleague's door with "No On H8" stuck to it, I feel like an open conversation is definitely not in the cards. And since I'm opposed to making political declarations via my (literal) academic office, I'm not voicing my opinion via the same medium, either. And I feel bad, because I think there are students who are only getting this very strident image of who their professors are, and I feel like I should counteract it--but at the same time, I truly do not want to alienate my students who are, say, gay and pro-gay marriage--because my job is to teach them about literature and rhetoric and writing, and I've always felt it's better to try to be something of a mysterious blank slate for them. But maybe I'm wrong in this, I don't know.

All my students, in fact, assume that I am an Obama-loving pro-choice pro-gay marriage socialist, because I DON'T talk about my politics in the classroom. The professors who do all have the central new york equivalent of the No on H8 stickers on their doors, and they lecture on their politics in whatever kind of classroom you choose--bio, history, philosophy, lit, sociology, etc. And I'm with you, I don't want to alienate my students who might be in favor of gay marriage, but there's not a soul on campus who fears alienating students who might be pro-life. Or pro-traditional marriage. Those students are alienated day in and day out. And no one cares at all. They're apologetic when they mention to me cautiously that they're pro-life. They expect a prof to bite their heads off. Or write them a worse reference letter. Or refuse to write one.