Another Right Wing "Beauty Pageant" Fiasco

As if Miss California USA Pageant winner Carrie Prejean wasn't a ridiculous enough figure, a right wing sham "beauty pageant" staged in Utah called the Mrs. Utah United States Pageant chose Karmel Larsen as their winner this year who is using her position for merely right wing political purposes to promote censorship and to tear down the First Amendment with attacks on freedom of expression. Larsen has been the Utah Valley Chapter President of American Mothers Inc. , a right wing antiGay marriage, antiabortion, pro-censorship group. Larsen was also a member of the right wing Parents Television Council, an organization that was largely responsible for generating most of the complaints about the brief incident involving Janet Jackson at the 2004 Superbowl. Many of the claimed complaints to the FCC were not from the general public, but computer generated from this one single organization, questioning the legitimacy of these complaints as merely generated by just a few persons using a computer.

Unlike some real beauty pageants, this sham beauty pageant has no talent contest, and the pro-censorship groups that Larsen was aligned with paid $1,000 in entry fees to put up their candidate, and to place her in a favorable position to win the competition and use her position as a political platform for their own right wing issues. North Korea couldn't have done a better job to set up a farce event to give power to who they predetermined to win.

What is also so silly about the moral crusading of Mrs. Utah United States Karmel Larsen is that the entire state of Utah has but just adult video store in the state, and it is in a remote part of the state as well. Yet several censorship organizations have organized merely to attack this one small adult video rental business which must comply with strict Utah obscenity standards and avoids stocking much of the more wild stuff to avoid prosecution in the state. Utah censorship groups make regular protest tours of the video store and travel up to several hundred miles by bus or car to picket this single adult entertainment business in the state of Utah. There is no problem with a proliferation of adult businesses in the state. But there's a problem with a proliferation of right wing organizations set up to attack this one single business. If anything this is a fine example of the political extremism of those in the censorship movement.

Ironically, a study by the Harvard business school conducted by Benjamin Edelman found that in Utah there are 5.47 adult website subscriptions per 1,000 broadband users, far and away the highest number in the nation, proving that there is a tremendous thirst for adult entertainment in Utah, however state officials, legislators, censorship organizations and the Mormon Church all work to suppress the constitutional rights of the citizens to spend money as they wish for such entertainment which is extremely rare in the state due to their censorship efforts. Many in Utah would spend money at strip clubs or other adult entertainment businesses if only the cities and the state allowed them to exist. But overly strict laws suppress such entertainment in the state which probably has the least available adult entertainment in the state. Even finding retailers who sell magazines such as Playboy are relatively rare in larger cities like Salt Lake City.

The state is so conservative that a few years a comic film called SALT LAKE CITY PUNK made fun of the very little freedom for punk rockers in the conservative city. With few bars or other entertainment nightlife places, Salt Lake City is a living hell for those musicians or other entertainers who look for outlets to play their music.

You can pretty much expect the 2009 Mrs. Utah USA winner, Karmel Larsen to start a speaking tour attacking Gay marriage, abortion or popular entertainment culture real soon. One such event was a poorly attended event held at local Provo, Utah library in which Larsen soapboxed about her right wing political views. Even in conservative Utah, most persons were intelligent enough to stay away like the plague from this crappy little event.

Just when you think that the right wing can't cheapen beauty pageants quite enough, they manage to find some new way to create a sham event to promote their phony winner to add fake legitimacy to their soapbox for purely political purposes. Maybe those in the women's liberation movement years ago who opposed these beauty pageants were right all along about them. They're just a bunch of crap.