Hilton, Malkin, and commentators

Michelle Malkin is a respected writer and conservative pundit, whose writing I typically enjoy as long as she doesn't venture near the same-sex/gay marriage issue - where she goes off the tracks in a variation of "I know what I know, and be-damned to any efforts to provide me with real-world input, new data, logic, or alternative perspectives."

All to many folks have, regrettably, at least one such topic in their range of discourse and while sad (Michelle is a very talented writer and advocate, in my estimation), at least she's only stuck with the one.

This morning, the Malkin takes exception to blogger Perez Hiltons "Miss California" antics . Malkin's meme finally went, in conjunction with her reader comments, from tiresomely dysfunctional bigotry to actively offensive.

For those new to the topic, terminally shallow celeb blogger Perez Hilton was (for reasons that escape me and that are largely irrelevant) chosen by the Miss USA organization as a judge for their annual beauty competition. Setting aside (with difficulty), for the moment, the standard issue snark on the ultimate silliness and shallowness of beauty contests, we proceed to the conjunction of the ever-flammable Hilton, the current Miss USA competition, and the Miss California (Carrie Prejean) competing in that event.

Hilton inquired, in his role as judge, of Miss Prejean regarding gay/same-sex marriage. In regrettably clumsy fashion, Miss Prejean expressed her opposition to same-sex marriage and implied it was somehow mutually exclusive to traditional marriage. Perez, not surprisingly, took exception - and equally unsurprising, his response was lengthy, vituperative, and crude.

Malkin opens her commentary on the situation descending from her usual mature and acerbic tone to swim in the shallow, "Perez End", of the literary pool by emulating his petty, childish, and amateurish "re-touching" of the posted photo of her "target" or symbol after choosing a rather ludicrous picture of Hilton to begin with.

Classy moves, there, Malkin - way to walk that walk when you're calling for maturity, civility, and class. I'm sort of puzzled how a visual representation of "I can be just as childish, petty, and immature as you are" accomplishes that - or how it reflects well on any of your subsequent comments, on conservative thought, or on libertarian thought.

Nonetheless, Hilton isn't precisely covered with glory, either.

Prejean answered the question about gay/same-sex marriage honestly and according to her convictions, and for that I honor her. In that exceptionally limited sense, she "done good."

Perez Hilton: “Vermont recently became the 4th state to legalize same-sex marriage. Do you think every state should follow suit. Why or why not?”

Prejean: “Well I think its great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And you know what, in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think it should be between a man and a woman. Thank you very much.”

However. Aside from the fact that, as a wordsmith, I find the construction and usages of Prejeans answer to be almost painful in their clumsiness, something more important is going on to which Malkin is almost wilfully blind (and more blatantly, her commenters) to a significant disconnect.

And before I touch on that disconnect, I will point out that as a libertarian, gun-owning, somewhat irritable, gay man...that the moment that answer left her lips, she lost any hope of any support she might seek from me, were I sitting as a judge in this instance. As a mental aid, let's insert the word "race" for gay, and see how Prejeans statement plays out:

“Well I think its great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-race marriage or opposite marriage. And you know what, in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a white and a white, or a black and black, and so on. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think it should be between a man and a woman two persons of the same race. Thank you very much.”

Read that again, and tell me it isn't a bigoted statement. Then tell me how the blatant pre-civil-rights was "oh no, never!" inspired or justified by religious belief or text in the old Jim Crow South. Hint: Just as poo is still poo, even if sprinkled by Holy Water - bigotry doesn't smell any sweeter with a dose of extra-special rose-scented cheap religious perfume.

Now the disconnect. Prejean ABSOLUTELY has the right to believe as she believes, in little green men, or in armies of flying monkeys coming to punish the sinners. Yay her!

HOWEVER, words/actions/deeds/publicly expressed opinions have CONSEQUENCES! Wretched, wretched, reality. People might *stop liking us*, they *might stop thinking we're a good candidate for one thing or another* (oh, like, say - representing an essentially silly and obsolete contest to select a mostly irrelevant goodwill ambassador intended to be representative of the best of ALL Americans, to wander around giving feel-good speeches for a year.), or perhaps even vote against us for political office, refuse to hire us, or become so offended as to make undoing your actions a major life project with punitive responses a happy sideline (say, perhaps, Proposition 8 - no, it's not over, the forces of decency just lost round 2 - and are tired of playing nice/vulnerable/helpless).

The theocratic right has long employed all of the above againt the LGBT community - I cannot help but respond to their plaintive whining with - "Gee, how do you like the other end of the stick?"

Perez (and yes, there are just too damned many Hiltons in public life, so I'm violating style and not using the the last name - sorry, but "Malkin" is just less confusing), however, is a bit of a toad. Where a civilized individual (as Perez alleges one of his fellow judges did - that Alicia Jacobs post vanished, but thank you Google Cache!) would have simply shot down Prejean as a bigot (religious inspiration not relevant - a bigot is a bigot) and issued a dignified statement along the lines of "By her answer, Miss California USA demonstrated to me that she could not in good conscience represent the diverse range of law-abiding U.S. citizens, nor be expected to interact successfully with that full range, any more than a daughter of the Klan might be expected to interact well with a meeting of the NAACP. I regretfully could not consider as a realistic candidate for Miss USA based on this."

Instead, Perez threw a crude public temper tantrum, undermining any point he might legitimately have and simultaneously inciting the theocratic right to the detriment of the LGBT community, in a moment that left me asking "God, could you please make him be on the other side?". Since then, in typical fashion, he has used his blog as a bully pulpit, taking every opportunity to berate and belittle Miss California USA over every mis-step and detail available, no matter how small. He's covering himself...but with something browner and far more fragrant than anything I'd recognize as glory, and I can't say I'm thrilled with the splatter effect.

Perez, I expect this of. But Malkin?

In a last touch on Malkin - why yes, there is gutter profanity, and I don't consider Perez either particularly insightful, nice, or mature - but misogyny? Beyond a bit of childish name-calling, I don't see despite of the female half of the species...just use of pejorative tools available to poor writers and uncreative thinkers.

Malkin then goes on to other topics, but her readers comments, oh my.

I'll hit that in the next post.