Ever since Miss California Carrie Prejean declared onstage last month at the Miss USA Pageant that she believed gay people should not have the right to marry, she has battled her critics in TV interviews, been championed by groups opposed to same-sex marriage and pretty much eclipsed the woman who beat her to become the reigning Miss USA.
(Does anyone even remember what state the winner was from?)
But that's nothing compared to what Prejean did to the Miss California organization. She hijacked it, the organizers said, for her own message.
"Up to now, we've just been riding along as a passenger on this runaway train," Keith Lewis, co-executive director of the Miss California USA pageant, said Monday morning at a news conference at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. "But that ends today."
And with that, the organizers labeled her a rogue Miss California and, well, ostracized her. They don't have the authority to dethrone her. That power lies only with Donald Trump, the owner of the Miss Universe and Miss USA pageant system. He is scheduled to weigh in on the brouhaha today at a news conference in New York.
Instead the organizers installed the Miss California first runner-up as a kind of shadow Miss California. Tami Farrell, a gleamy-eyed, long-haired blond in a short one-shouldered dress, beamed and took her place on the dais when she was introduced as the "official Beauty of California ambassador" by Shanna Moakler, executive director of the state pageant.
The controversy began nearly a month ago, when Prejean was asked about her views on same-sex marriage during the nationally televised Miss USA pageant. Although she said she believed people were entitled to do as they liked, she said marriage should only be recognized as an institution between a man and a woman.
Prejean lost the pageant (she was runner-up to Miss North Carolina, Kristen Dalton). But her statement quickly became fodder for the ongoing culture war over same-sex marriage. Gay-rights activists criticized her, while her backers said she was being unfairly attacked.
Yes, there's also some controversy over recently revealed semi-naked photos of Prejean (clad in panties, her arm draped strategically over her chest with nary a nipple in sight) and chortling over a breast enhancement job the local pageant helped finance. ("The majority of women who are titleholders have breast implants . . . I didn't think breast implants were shocking," Moakler said, chuckling.)
