Miss Cal's "best possible light"

WHENEVER I happen to come across the words "beauty pageant"  I am stricken by unpleasant thoughts.  Anita Bryant and, oh...Sarah Palin, for example. But for pure public attention, Miss California, Carrie Prejean, is creeping up into third place.   Within moments of her runner-up selection in the Miss USA (!) pageant, she  has  become the queen-ette o f the National Organization for Marriage,  and will be appearing here and there for the organization's programs to protect heterosexual marriage against the intrusion of the same-sex marriage supporters in our national life. The options of day jobs for beauty contestants who finish second are somewhat limited, I'd guess. 

But there is now a second dimension (Ok, read it as a pun, if that  is where your mind leads you) ) for Miss Prejean's , eh, public figure.   She was competing in the pageant with breast implants paid  for by the pageant, which now defends its action as being rather common in the retail beauty business.  I have no reason to doubt that.  But shouldn't we sort of liken it in public deception to steroids for professional athletes to give them greater competitive  advantage?  

So whatever the pardons  for Miss Prejean, I have little choice but to give my Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy award (GALL) to Keith Lewis, the co-director of the Miss California pageant,  who explains:

"We assisted when Carrie came to us and voiced an interest in having the procedure done.  We want to put her in the best possible confidence in order to present her in the best possible light on the national stage."

Of the several definitions of pageantry, I choose the third one:  "Colorful, showy display".  

Sounds about right. Keep in mind the next time that...

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Sean Penn and Milk crashed the party

IN THE WAKE  of all of the approving exclamation points accorded Sean Penn and the blockbuster movie Milk, I rummaged through some earlier reviews.  Given the subject matter of gay rights, the dramatic fuse was relentlessly in sight. The fateful challenge of  Harvey Milk, the openly gay San Francisco supervisor, to Anita Bryant and her cadre of gay-bashers churned waves of  mixed reaction in conservative quarters and the religious right, the morals police for homosexuality.

There was, for example, conservative movie critic Michael Medved, who has found his own niche audience among the Hollywood-haters.  Medved seemed to struggle with his admiration for the movie.    On one hand, he said it had a "heavy-handed political agenda" but tempered this criticism by conceding that Milk  is a "lovingly crafted film."  

On the other hand, film reviewer Ethan Samuel Rodgers, for a Web  posting called Christian Spotlight on the Movies,  followed the old Falwell line that one can love the sinner but hate the  sin. But  Rodgers opined that  the picture  failed as  a biopic "because  it is biased, overly offensive, and simply untrue to the story of a man's life we may never truly know."  Oh?  I doubt  that many who left the theatre after viewing Milk were not amply aware of the bias and offensive behavior of those who set out to destroy him - and did.  

Such behavior and horrific notions still exist in some quarters today, but let's give the late Harvey Milk (and a   heroic   performance by Sean Penn!)  huge credit for crashing the gay-bashers party and making life a little more civilized for everyone concerned today.  God knows, we need it.