Same-Sex Marriage and Pretty People

My wife was getting ready for work this morning and turned on the living room TV. I was awake in bed, fortifying myself to pull myself upright, when I heard a quick snippet about a beauty pageant contestant causing a stir because she was asked about whether she thought states should allow same-sex marriage by one of the judges.

My first thought...a beauty pageant contestant is considered an authority on constitutional law and ethics? It's a stereotype, I know, but I still question why a beauty contestant's opinion is something to cause a stir.

So I went through my morning rituals and took a seat at the console to Google for the story in hopes of finding more information to justify what a beauty pageant contestant could have done to become a figurehead for the anti-same-sex-marriage movement. I found it.

Perez Hilton was the judge of the contest that asked the question. He's a self-styled celebrity gossip blogger and gay-rights advocate with a huge following of celebrity stalkers. The story is in the news apparently because he criticized the pageant contestant with rather harsh vulgarity because she disagreed with what he thought was the right answer.

In other words, she was asked her opinion about something that really has nothing to do with standing on a stage and looking pretty, she gave her opinion, and despite the fact that she wasn't auditioning to join MENSA or answering to Congress as a possible Supreme Court candidate, was used as a platform for Perez to further his own attention-whoring agenda.

Really the only interesting part of the story for me was that the contest was taking place at the Planet Hollywood casino and hotel in Vegas, which used to be the Aladdin, where my wife and I honeymooned so many years ago.

I didn't give my own opinion on gay marriage here. You might try to draw a conclusion based on my negative tone towards the event here...I'd warn you that would probably be a mistake. My criticism here is that an attention whore used something as superficial and shallow as a beauty pageant to make an issue of something that has nothing to do with parading around in a bathing suit. I'd be just as disappointed in people if a fashion model in a bikini, whose primary skillset is focused on fashion and beauty, said the space shuttle program isn't worth investing millions of dollars and having it cause a stir. My second criticism is the fact that the media gave said attention whore the attention that he wanted from such a transparent attempt to play on a fickle public's attention span.