Opposite Marriage

Mostly, California is awesome. We have lots of things that you don't (the Pacific Ocean, San Diego, Yosemite, In-N-Out Burger, Jack Nicholson, Disneyland*, world's largest undocumented labor pool, etc.).

As with any proposition, there will be nay-sayers and contrarians who will try to point out what is embarrassing about California (world class air pollution, Malthusian overcrowding, laughable public transport, Jack Nicholson).

Sure, I concede, there are contradictions and paradoxes. But this is not a question of logical If-Then; it's a metaphysical question of What Is and Why. And, luckily for this format, those can only be answered in essay form, and by that I mean padded up with platitudes, glossy repackaging and repetition of intellectually indistinguishable ideas and the facile conflation of a central metaphor with a content premise. I majored in a Humanities discipline.

With that in mind, I will say that one of the things I am most proud of as a Californian is our reigning Miss California USA. My God, she's perfect.

You don't have to like her as a person. Hell, I'm not 100% convinced IS a person. My current best guess is some kind of freakish hybrid of cocker spaniel and a sunflower. But you have to admit, she kind of hits the mark, representation-wise.

Stop me when I get to the part that isn't us:

Both of our futures are in the hands of megalomaniacal self-promoting camera whores.

We both have very firm plans for what to do when handed bailout money.

Education maybe isn't exactly either of our strong suits.

Despite our professed morals, we'll show you our tits if it furthers our desperate, unprincipled lust for fame.

Mom's gay.

We hate the gays.

OK, I don't really know how California's mom is gay, or even who California's mom would necessarily be.

But to paraphrase grumpy Ole Uncle Rummy, as he always said during his jaw-droppingly condescending Pentagon briefings, you go to the pageant with the Beauty Queen you have, not the Beauty Queen you WISH you had.

Sure, we're the Left Coast, home of free thinking, smelly hippies at Haight-Ashbury and the Hollywood Liberal Jew Entertainment Cabal that controls your thoughts. We have two--TWO!--Girl Senators AND most of us voted for the black guy.

But somewhere lurking in that batch of bean curd is the choking, ominous Clarence Thomas Coke can pubic hair of Backlash Social Conservatism that floats to the top just before the soy milk can completely coagulate.

Carrie Prejean is like CSI: Miami: somehow it's gotten this far along, but I can't think of a single person who has ever said a positive thing about it.

Instead of kicking Carrie while she's down, I say we should recognize her for who she is and embrace her. She represents us. She is our sister.

And see how easily you went for that? Eagerly emracing our sister: what's more archetypical redneck than that?


* Don't you even fucking start, Florida. You know better.