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The Real Reason the Miss CA Controversy is Obnoxious

I never said much about the Carrie Prejean answer at the Miss USA pageant or the “controversy” that followed because it really did not mean that much to me.  I felt the same way about that as I did about John Rocker’s racist and homophobic comments several years ago.  When that story broke I didn’t think it was all that shocking that a dumb, insensitive, uneducated jock said something dumb and insensitive.  And now I don’t think it’s all that interesting that a dumb blond beauty queen said something stupid.  Last year it was miss South Carolina talking about U.S. Americans not having maps and the Iraq, such as.  Carrie’s answer was only slightly smarter and slightly more grammatically correct.

I figured out this morning why the answer interests me – even pleases me somewhat.  It’s a sad realization that a Miss U.S.A. contestant might be the best thing the homophobes have left.  I didn’t realize till the Miss SC viral video that Miss U.S.A. was still televised.  It’s on some low-level redneck cable channel now.  It’s an embarrassing anachronism.  After years of progress, female Supreme Court justices, Jennifer Garner in Alias, cliché movie plots about girls joining soccer teams, on and on, we still have a competition where women flash huge fake smiles while being judged in swimsuits and high heels.  If I saw someone at the pool in full makeup and high heels it would be hard to contain my laughter.  It’s ridiculous.  

The same shrinking audience that still finds pageants compelling is probably the only demographic left persuaded by “opposite marriage” and the always thought provoking political argument of, “That’s how I was raised.”  Lame.  Miss California is as deep and complex as the typical argument against same-sex marriage.  What’s more, Donald Trump defended her keeping her crown not because he agreed with her “values” but because of money and ratings.  Dumb, anachronistic views stated during a dumb anachronistic “competition” defended by a very sexist man who has no values beyond profit.  I could not ask for a better depiction of the Republican Party. 

Hey girls, who do you want to be like when you grow up?  Do you want your intellect dismissed for fake breasts, fake tan, and a fake smile?  Do you want to find a rich sugar daddy that trades you in for his next wife when you pass your expiration date?  Or do you want to be educated, financially independent, complex, and capable of stringing together a coherent sentence?  Do you want to be judged by your kindness to others or the circumference of your boobs? Now, with that in mind, what political ideology do you most identify with?  Careful, do not think past how you were raised.  Keep it simple.  Guys don’t go for smart girls.

The message sent by Carrie Prejean and Donald Trump is disgusting.  No, not the anti-gay stuff.  That’s just dumb.  The valuing of women and money for all the wrong reasons and elevation of fake appearance and fake personality over real development is what is really disgusting.  There’s a bigger picture here than the poorly worded homophobic byproduct.  This week’s Gallop data that shows the Republican Party only holding on to frequent churchgoers combined with Newsweek’s data that frequent churchgoers are a quickly diminishing group does not bode well for the party.  Neither does trotting Miss California out as your new mascot.  After a punishing election the worst thing you can do is make your side go from unpopular to downright embarrassing.  On second thought, that’s the best she can do.     

The Civil Rights Movement of the Future

I have often wondered what the next civil rights movement would be.  Currently we are in the tail end of the sexual minority civil rights movement.  But that has lost some of its steam – thankfully – due to inevitability.  Does anyone, even a hardcore conservative, not think there will be marriage equality in all 50 states within our lifetime.  It’s a question of how slow change will come, not whether change will come.  I wonder too how many conservative really believe this will somehow spell the end of the institution of marriage as opposed to using that hollow argument as a last ditch scare tactic.

I have joked before that the next civil rights movement will be for little people.  We will see bills that protect the hiring and public accommodations rights of little people.  But, honestly, that’s more of a joke than a sincere prediction.  I actually think the next group to experience a mini-civil rights movement will be atheists.  It is still hard to get hired, elected, even taken seriously if you are an atheist.

I think atheists will organize more and more as a political force and as a social force to try to improve their image.  However, this article predicts that eventually we’ll be fighting over robot civil rights.  Science fiction movies for decades have centered around the rise of robots and eventually demanding some form of civil recognition.  Johnny 5 wanted to be declared a person.  The Terminator and Matrix series imagine a future in which robots develop intelligence and dominate humans.  I-Robot chronicles what happens when Robots develop freewill – and evil subservience – after being programmed to parallel a slave class. 

Last night I finally watched Lars and the Real Girl.  The doll in the movie exists in real life.  There is a company that makes anatomically correct female mannequins for sexual play.  And no one advocates laws against sex dolls even if they personally frown on it morally.  But, what if those dolls could walk and talk?  What if they were programmed to simulate human personality and people wanted to have sex with those robots.  This article argues that people in Massachusetts will start clamoring for the right to have sex with robots by the year 2012.  That’s a bit soon I think but the premise is that Massachusetts is a very liberal state.  This week marks the 5th anniversary of gay marriage in Massachusetts.  Judging by its status as ahead of the curve on that issue the author thinks that state will be the first to codify robot rights.  It’s an interesting premise even if a bit absurd.

Every culture, every generation has some group of “others” that seek to be treated the same as everyone else.  It’s one of the few universals of the human experience.  It is necessary to remove current struggles from their particulars and see the similarities across time and places of these civil rights movements.  The untouchables in India, apartheid in South Africa, universal suffrage, and even the Americans with Disabilities Act were the products of a subset of the population seeking equal treatment.  The gay rights struggle is only controversial because it’s current.  In a decade or two we will wonder what all the fighting was about.  By then, if this guy is correct, we’ll have moved on to obsessing about robot sex.  I welcome the change. 

Inconvenient Fact

An interesting fossil was found today of a primate ancestor. (Really it was put together from a previous exhibition.) I am curious to see how the religious imbeciles spin this one.  God put mysterious bones in the ground to confuse us.  The human ancestor fossil is 6000 years old? Fossils are really just clay casts like sasquatch footprints made by anti-god scientists.  More than likely they will pretend that the discovery never took place.  They will not make mention of it at the Creation Museum because it does not fit neatly into their literal religious narrative.  Things that don’t support their predetermined conclusions are dismissed as myth or intentional laws. 

Party of One

I have said for literally years that the Republican Party is catering almost exclusively to the religious right and conservative evangelicals.  And I have also said that it would ultimately hurt the party.  The Bush administration served the religious right almost exclusively.  Not surprising, hard evidence is not turning up that shows conclusively that approach did hurt the party.

Gallop tracked change in party ID since the beginning of the Bush administration in 2001.  From 2001-2009 Republicans lost people every single demographic group except one, frequent churchgoers.  The vigorously active Christians still call themselves Republican.  Every other group, not so much.  This is a direct result of the way the Republicans, and the Bush administration in particular, conducted themselves.  By hammering one or two notes – gay marriage and abortion – while not doing anything about issues that actually affect people’s lives (that aren’t gay) the party failed to offer anything but fear and failure.  And now they are still catering to the same old religious nuts.  Keep it up.  Let’s see if the East Coast can bleed blue all the way down to Georgia. 

Presidential Signing Statements

The link below is to a paper I did on signing statements for a course on the presidency.  It is interesting the way the paper developed because my original interest in the topic was Bush’s use of signing statements.  I was sure that the power was extra-constitutional at best, unconstitutional at worst.  I was surprised by the history and typical use of signing states.  I surprised myself more by writing an argument in favor of the most egregious uses of signing statements.  Having already read a lot of articles on signing statements and Bush I decided it was too easy to add to the echo chamber of condemnation.  So I challenged myself by writing the counter argument.  I think it turned out pretty interesting.  Judge for yourself. 

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