You're Not Fired!

When Carrie Prejean told famously fruity blogger Perez Hilton that she supports ghettoizing gay monogamy because "that's how [she] was raised", the 21-year-old beauty contestant became an overnight hero of the "opposite marriage" movement. Hilton, who traffics in celebrity gossip, did his own side no favors when he indecorously described the Miss USA runner-up and fellow Californian as "a stupid bitch".

Where in the hell anybody got the idea that beauty pageants---where women are paraded around like swine at a county fair---that these events might be an effective mouthpiece for the progressive agenda, I can't begin to understand. Hilton, whose real name is Mario Armando Lavandeira, boasts that it was his own controversial question from the judges panel which cost Miss California the national crown.

The ensuing publicity nearly stripped her of the state title.

No sooner had conservative talking heads coronated her Miss Heartland Values 2009 than a batch of topless photos materialized that gave organizers of the state competition an excuse to punish Prejean in part for her vocal opposition to gay marriage. Nobody should take the word salad that passes for extemporaneous speech at these events seriously. Giving a forthright answer to a difficult question should probably not have denied her the win. At the same time, pageant officials were not about to sit on their hands as paleo-conservative handlers tried turning their titleholder into Joe the Plumber with a vagina.

So in waddles Donald Trump, who owns the circuit, with his Solomonic compromise: Ms. Prejean would go on about the business of milking her newfound notoriety for all that it's worth, and everybody else would shut the fuck up about it. The photos weren't that bad in light of the fact that you can easily find racier fare in the grocery checkout line. Or as The Donald put it (several times), This is the 21st Century.

And so it is.