Trump, Prejean, and the American Paradox

So the beauty queen is against gay marriage. So the Web gossip queen outs her and she doesn't win Miss USA. So she's got racy photos in her portfolio.

But this is America. Now she's much better known than Miss USA.

There are serious issues getting short shrift here, but this story is irresistible to the hit-hungry media. Including me. And, admit it, including you.

The latest: Donald Trump (if you think I'm putting a picture of that hair in here, think again), who owns (of course) the Miss USA Pageant, has announced that Carrie Prejean can keep her Miss California USA title, in spite of all of the above.

Whew. Well, here's my hastily assembled excuse for publishing this. No story in a while so perfectly encompasses the 21st Century American paradox. It's got everything —

1. Our sexual ambivalence — are we Puritans or people-of-the-world?

2. Are we conservatives or liberals?

3. Can we live and let live? And let this apply to gay and lesbian Americans and conservative-libertine beauty queens alike?

I believe: not only can we, but we do. We live and thrive, keeping our heads just above the roiling surface of the media sea in which we thrash.

Best of all, this fumble-flap has given Donald Trump the opportunity to produce — out of his entrepreneurial ego and impressive marketing instincts — a most amazingly American decision.

Can we rationalize having Barack Obama as the leader of our new reconstruction, and Donald Trump as moral arbiter. Yes we can.

— Dave Newton