NO SALES TAX
Photo courtesy of The AP
Miss USA: November 2009 Archives
You gotta give Upton a little bit of credit: Unlike one C. Prejean, she has realized that the best way to endear herself to the American public following public disgrace was not to make a sex tape (shocker!), but to make fun of herself. She's good-humored enough in this clip, and presumably the humiliation of being nationally recognized as ignorant taught her something. (Otherwise, why would she bother with this demeaning little "adventure"?) And while I wouldn't say that she won me over, what I take issue with here is actually Jimmy Kimmel. Obviously, instead of sending Upton out to learn about, um, the things she obviously doesn't know (like foreign politics and geography) -- which by the way would have been equally amusing -- Kimmel feels compelled to send her to Babies R Us to learn about ... her body. Because she must be such an idiot that she doesn't know what to do with it! Perhaps a long-held distaste for Kimmel is influencing me here, but I must say I find the whole thing mean-spirited and distasteful. And that is my two cents for the moment!
Carrie Prejean continues to be all over the news these days. As if it wasn't enough to get stripped of her crown, or become enmeshed in various scandals over a) gay marriage b) the money she borrowed for breast implants c) her topless picture experiment or d) the alleged defamation of her character that was someone else's (California's?) fault (...?), now Carrie Prejean is making headlines by talking about how the scandalous topless pictures that she took are a product of, um, our culture. She writes:
"Unfortunately, pornography has become mainstreamed -- it rushes at us through big screens, portable screens; soft-core porn is on mainstream TV cable stations, hard-core porn is just a mouse click away on the internet, and the envelope of what seems acceptable seems to get pushed farther and farther as more and more people are exposed to this material.
The result is that girls grow up in a culture where it is hard to have an innocent, healthy, normal view of themselves, how they should behave, how they should act, and how they should dress."
"Our bodies are temples of the Lord. We should earn respect and admiration for our hearts, not for showing skin to look sexy ... I have since learned that your outer beauty can only get you so far in life."
It is possible that Carrie Prejean has learned a lesson throughout her various troubled experiences with the press. But, given the great lengths to which she has gone in order to keep her google search numbers high, I am presuming it is a different message than, say, that which mentors and nuns might have hoped for.
