I'm not all that familiar with Roland Martin, the CNN talking head guy who is apparently filling in for Campbell Brown (with whom I am also not very familiar), or so they tell me. But I have seen him a few times, most notably around the election, and he struck me as an intelligent, well-spoken guy who is pretty good at what he does.
However, I recently came across this opinion piece by him and was pretty surprised by the lameness of his argument. Now, I am no Perez Hilton fan. In fact, I only have a vague sense of who that is. And it does seem like Hilton was being overblown a bit. But Martin is arguing that we should applaud Prejean for being honest rather than attack her for her views. I think this is a false dichotomy.
Sure, it's great that Prejean didn't spew some noncommittal line and sidestep the question. That doesn't make her answer more acceptable, though. If he'd asked for her opinion on, say, whether there is a conspiracy among the Jews to take over America, or whether we should reinstitute racial segregation in schools, and she'd said yes, I can't see Martin making the same arguments.
The other part of his argument is equally ridiculous to me. He says that her view is a mainstream view, that most Americans agree with her, including Obama and Hillary Clinton. But so what? Even if Obama and Clinton do hold such views (which, actually, I doubt - but they're required to say they do in order to get votes), it doesn't make the view less bigoted. There was a time when most people viewed segregation as acceptable as well, and it is very good that people stood up and argued vehemently against such views.
I say: Slam away at her. Well, not so much her, but her viewpoint. Make it the sort of thing people are ashamed to say in public. That is how you stop memes - with other memes. You get it out there that intolerance will not be tolerated, that it is an outdated and backwards thing. You equate being anti-gay with being anti-integration. After all, gay rights as an issue is just the latest civil rights issue to come up.
I can only applaud her courage to speak out as much as I can applaud the courage of a racist who speaks out. Sure, it's great that they say what they believe, but what they believe is really unfortunate.
Friday, April 24, 2009
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1 comments:
I actually commented on that CNN editorial, but CNN doesn't seem to ever post my comments... don't know why.
The anti-gay world is losing mainstream ground year after year, and we'll only be seeing more of this sort of debate until, like with racism and holocaust denial, homophobia will be seen as a major negative for lunatic outsiders. No matter what the Church of Latter Day Saints has in mind, they will ultimately lose.
As much as I'd love to rail against this idiot, we do need to face the fact that she is a beauty pageant contestant... every single one of them stumbles over the questions that they have been ill-trained to handle... and um like such as The Iraq. While some of these women may, in fact, be smart, the Miss USA pageant seems to have a stupid-ray pointed at the stage. Everyone comes off as fake and dumb. So, hers was the luck of the draw. I imagine that a good number of those women would have answered the same way, or equally inanely at least.
My main question is: who does Miss USA think their audience is? Same question to Miss California.
My answer would be: women and gay men. Did this idea never enter the minds of these people when training to answer questions?
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