A dissenting opinion

Another blogger commented on my opinion of the Miss USA interview issue.  He made a great effort to have his view known and discussed so I am reprinting a portion of his comment here.  If you would like to see the post init's entirety, click here.

Tabacco has just left the following comment:

Knoonell: I hesitate to address you as Mr. or Ms. because I am unsure. If I were certain, that courtesy would appear before "Knoonell".   I’m a Mrs.  You would be able to tell that from my homepage.  But “Knoonell” is a title all by itself.

Is there a Law in America that strikingly good looking women must also be "Legally Blond" and biased? What do you mean by biased?  If you mean having an opinion, we all have opinions, and they don’t all agree.  So I guess, yes natural law would apply here.  But that law works for any woman, or man for that matter.

Anita Bryant, Sarah Palin & now Carrie Prejean - all Beauty Contest Queens, not necessarily winners, ALL BIASED & ALL BEAUTIFUL! I’m sure they would all thank you for that high praise.  

Their fathers obviously had things on their minds besides intellect when they picked their mothers to marry. Why do you say that?  I hope it’s not just because their opinions do not conform with yours.  I

f you take marginal mentality and train from the cradle, you get exactly what you planned: no original thought, no obstinate personality, and every bit the PARROT! Exactly who are you talking about here.  This looks like your standard generalization to me.  

I assert that these three Beauty Queens were imprinted from birth just as some birds or animals are imprinted upon by the first live form they see. That is how some animals perceive their human "imprinter" as their "parent".   Do you mean here that these three women  began to learn the values of their parents or caregivers from birth?  That is a very safe assertion.  I would suggest you would find few people who would disagree with you there.  Parents (or primary caregivers) are a person’s primary teachers.  Additionally I would say that both children and adults adopt the values of the people whom they spend the most time with.  Would you agree with that? 

While this is understandable in babies and preschoolers, it is pitiable in adults.   I’m not sure I follow you.  Are you saying that adults who happen to agree with their parents values after several years of thoughtful experience are pitiable?  What if they have developed solid and independent reasons for holding views that are similar?  I would have to disagree with you on that one.

Further, are you suggesting that Mrs. Palin and Mrs. Bryant have no better reason to hold their particular points of view than “That’s how I was raised.”?  I don’t recall hearing Mrs Palin ever say that in her speeches.  (I was too young to pay much attention quotes from Mrs. Bryant.) 

I will agree that Miss PreJean could have come up with a better reason for her view of marriage than “That’s how I was raised.”  But I am not surprised or disappointed that a woman of her age is still highly influenced by what her parents taught her.  Adulthood doesn’t happen overnight.  I would probably have the same answer for many values questions when I was her age.  Forming ones own conscience is a lifetime endeavor.

Yes, I like looking at Miss California. Yes, I'm glad she lost! Nobody asks questions of contestants in Mr. Olympia contest.   Irrelevant 

Women have been discriminated against again. But Miss California wasn't robbed! You cannot be robbed if you open up your purse and dump the contents on the ground. Miss California would have been better served had she opened up her purse rather than her propagandized mind.  Again, are you calling it propaganda because her views run counter to your own?  I assert that the propaganda of that moment belongs completely to Mr. Hilton.  That is why I say Carrie was robbed.  She was marked down by a small minded man who was angry that she didn’t agree with his opinion.  He used that particular opportunity to further his own cause and his criteria for giving Miss Prejean a zero for that portion of the competition was counter to the purpose of the interview portion of the pageant.

Whereas the least educated among us and those with lower IQs are the most intolerant.   More support please. 

That is a known fact, not a careless pejorative. Really?  Who “knows” that and how was it figured out? 

By the way, Carrie never displayed any intolerance for any of the above mentioned groups of people.  She even displayed gracious tolerance for those who disagreed with her opinion of the definition of marriage.  Personally I would guess that Miss Prejean was taught by her parents to love and respect people in the groups you mentioned.  Nothing that she said showed intolerance for any person.  She reserved her comments strictly to the topic of what marriage is.

Bess Myerson, also a former Beauty Queen, was intelligent and tolerant. Good for her.  So not all Beauty Queens are the same.   I couldn’t agree more.  I respected Bess Myerson for more than her beauty.   Duly noted.

By the way, tolerance is not a virtue.  But that’s a whole other discussion.

I hope I have not violated your rules, but I have attempted to state the Truth as euphemistically as I possibly could so as not to be unnecessarily offensive.   Could you please go back and identify your sources of truth?  This really looks likes unsubstantiated opinion to me.  You are entitled to it.  But please don’t pass it off as anything more than it is.

After this point you get off topic and begin to proselytize.  I am not of a desire to convince you to change your views but I find it tedious when people throw out the tolerance word yet call opposing opinions “wrong”  “illogical” and “of lesser value”.   

I don’t know what your source of truth is.  I personally believe in a God who is the source of truth, who has handed it down to us in a variety of ways and has promised to protect its integrity.  You may not like to hear it but any “truth” of yours that runs counter to His will be instantly rejected by me.  Call me stupid.  But His truths have stood firm for thousands of years. That and my lifetime’s worth of evidence is enough to convince me.