Heroines or Hypocrites?

Out with evangelical media spokespeople Falwell and Dobson, in with Palin and Prejean.  Am I the only one who doesn’t see this as an improvement?   It’s a shame the evangelical everyman (or woman) can’t get fair representation.  Finally the press moves the spotlight off the dying (if not dead) old guard religious right white male figureheads, but only to hand the microphone to the contemporary conservative beauty queens of power and pomp, respectively.  Of course it’s their peculiar positions–in both senses of the word–that make their stories worth printing.  The politics of celebrity.  The celebrityhood of politicians.  Evangelicals in public positions are inherently different from the rest of us, and that’s not necessarily bad, but there is the question of whether what they are doing in the world (which is watching) is actually in harmony with the Christian faith and values they claim to represent.

So Palin didn’t get elected VP.  Thank God!  She can actually stay in the same part of the world as her teenaged daughter who is a new mom, and perhaps have a little spare time (which I’m assuming governors have slightly more of than VPs) to spend with her special needs baby, not to mention her husband and her other three children. 
 
So Prejean was fired from her “job” as Miss California.  Hallelujah!  I heard she’s a new Christian–maybe now she can find her identity in Christ instead of selling her sexuality (to the point of pageant officials paying for her breast implants and her sending topless photos in January to her sponsor to ask if she was in good enough shape for the pageant–I am not linking the source because it would be…well…inappropriate).  I haven’t written the Prejean Paradox yet but someone else did (and the comments are worth reading as well):  Her.meneutics: The Other Miss California Controversy.

Also, to elevate Prejean (in particular) to the level of a heroine detracts from the believers in other countries and eras who have been persecuted, imprisoned and even martyred–not for speaking political views–but for living out their faith.  Discrimination is wrong, and even if it did occur in what I consider an embarrassing example, wouldn’t it be more Christlike and a better witness for our voices to be heard the loudest where prejudice doesn’t just dethrone, but it actually dehumanizes?  Like say in Georgia, where segregation endures on prom night.