Looking Good for the GOP

Things were looking good for Miss California. But then things began to go wrong. I’m talking The Stepford Wives meets Westworld wrong. She began skipping scheduled pageant events, which she was contractually obligated to attend. She began attending anti-gay marriage events, which she was contractually obligated to avoid. She was accused of sending hostile e-mails, hindering normal business activity and an “inability to work in a civil and mutually beneficial manner.” In other words, Prejean took a page from Sarah Palin’s upcoming memoir and went rogue. However, Prejean claims that it was her religious beliefs, not her inability to do her job, which led to her eventual firing. As such, she filed a lawsuit against the pageant for “libel, slander and religious discrimination.” The pageant, in a classy retaliation, countersued Prejean for the cost of her breast augmentation surgery. The legal battle raged for a couple months until last week, when Prejean mysteriously and abruptly settled out of court as news leaked onto the internet of a “sex tape,” which she admits to starring in, following closely on the heels of a string of semi-nude photos. On Wednesday night, when CNN’s Larry King asked her why she agreed to the settlement if she really felt she’d been fired for her religious beliefs — as opposed to incompetence — she pulled the plug on her mic and threatened to walk off the show in the middle of the segment. It was reminiscent of how Palin pulled the plug on her governorship and walked away from her Alaskan constituents in the middle of her term. As for the exploitative images and “sex-tape,” rather than blaming a sleazy photographer and an even sleazier ex-boyfriend for violating her trust, Prejean has insisted that she is the victim of a sinister conspiracy to humiliate her perpetrated by the “liberal media.” “There is a campaign against me trying to silence me,” she proclaimed on the Today Show. “… Since when does freedom of speech not exist? Since when is someone [such as Keith Olbermann] able to go on national TV and call someone the most awful names you can call a woman and get away with it?” To answer the second question first: Since freedom of speech was enshrined in the Constitution. And to address the implication behind the first question: No one has said that freedom of speech does not exist or tried to punish Prejean for exercising this right. She also exercised her freedom to enter into a popularity contest, said something unpopular, and got dumped. End of story. Yet some Republicans are convinced there is a liberal plot to revoke civil liberties and destroy America as they know it.

More at: The Cornell Daily Sun!