On The Donald, Carrie Prejean's Statement, and Free Speech

The most recent kerfuffle over Carrie Prejean has to do with recent suggestions that she would be stripped of her "Miss California" crown for lingerie pictures she posed for at seventeen. However, one of the greatest thinkers and handsomest men of our modern era, Donald Trump, has brought the hammer down on this notion.

Miss California USA can retain her crown even though she failed to reveal she had posed in her underwear as a teenager, pageant owner Donald Trump said Tuesday.

Carrie Prejean appeared by Trump's side as he made the announcement at New York's Trump Tower.

Trump also defended the answer that Prejean gave at last month's Miss USA pageant when she was asked her view of marriage by judge Perez Hilton, a celebrity blogger. She said she believes marriage is between a man and a woman.

"It's the same answer the president of the United States gave; it's the same answer many people gave," Trump said. "She gave an honorable answer; she gave an answer from her heart."

Trump said he and other pageant officials had reviewed racy photos of Prejean and decided they were acceptable.

"We are in the 21st century. We have determined the pictures taken are fine," he said, adding that "in some cases the pictures were lovely."

Heh. "In some cases." There's something sardonic about The Donald that Harrogate has always found appealing, however much Harrogate has tried to rebel against liking anything about the guy.

But enough about bad hair, smirks, and the like. In the clip below, Carrie Prejean commits the same error that so many Americans in and out of academia make. She states that she exercised her First Amendment rights on the stage when Perez asked her about gay marriage. This is of course true. But then she makes the leap into asserting that those same rights, for which her grandfather fought, were violated in the backlash that followed. Tied up in this of course is the notion that the Miss USA judges violated her First Amendment Rights when they allegedly deprived her of victory as punishment for her opinions.




Sorry, Miss Prejean, but ye are full of it here. The First Amendment protects you from facing government retribution for speaking your mind. It most certainly does NOT protect you or anyone else from being publically demonized for your opinions. This is part of the American tradition, too. Perez, classless as he is, was exercising HIS free speech rights when he called you a "Cunt," among other epithets. You might think of it as "punishment," but it is not a violation of your free speech rights for people to make fun of you or to villify your opinions. These, like it or not, are often the consequences of weighing in on a hotbutton issue in the American discourse.

All that being said. Harrogate, again, totally disagrees with Prejean's stated opinion, but also thinks that many on the Left have behaved very badly in demonizing her for what she said. Harrogate has established that in his opinion, when you look at the whole fiasco objectively, people like Olbermann and Perez look much, much worse as human beings, than does Prejean. And of course, Prejean's champions in the media, people like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity etc., are already wastes of skin who make their living spreading lies and hate, so who really cares where they fit into this particular equation?

And Miss Prejean, as for the judges. They are free to use whatever criterion they wish, especially since you will never be able to prove that you would have won but for offering said opinion.