If you didn't catch last night's edition of CNN's "Larry King Live," you missed some great comedy.
It's safe to say that near-Miss USA Carrie Prejean didn't mean to be funny, but she really can't help it, can she? The interview had Mrs. KintlaLake and me laughing like we hadn't laughed in a long time.
Like the woman she idolizes -- "Sarah Palin is my hero" -- Prejean is a believer, and not just by religious definition. She truly believes that she's credible, that the words passing her lips make sense.
She isn't. They don't.
Forget the pageant hubbub and the boob-job, the racy photos and the sex video that she made for her boyfriend. Never mind that she scolded King last night as being "extremely inappropriate" for asking perfectly reasonable questions, and that she nearly walked off the set when the host had the audacity to take a call from a viewer.
No, the problem with Prejean, who whines that she's been "Palinized" mercilessly, is that she's a pure [sic] believer -- she operates solely from her values and feelings without passing them through the filter of critical thought (or expecting anyone else to do so, apparently). It's embarrassing and, as she demonstrated yesterday, laughable.
The Miss USA pageant, in a statement, said it well: "It appears that Carrie is frequently in error but never in doubt."
Raising embarrassment and humor to art forms are conservatives who hold the likes of Prejean and Palin as icons. I mean, many of my own positions are, by relative measure, conservative, but they're grounded in rational thought, not fanned by some fluffed-up persecution complex.
Yes, I've been pretty rough on Prejean and, long before that, Palin. I can summarize my reasons in two brief sentences:
An independent thinker has worth. Ideology-bound believers are a dime-a-dozen.
That's why neither the former Miss California nor the former Mayor of Wasilla has my sympathy, my admiration or (perish the thought) my vote.
They'll have my attention only when I need a good laugh.
