Miss USA

I was watching the Today show this morning and they were all in an uproar about the other night Miss USA pagent.  Aparently Miss California made a political blunder that cost her the crown.  Openly gay, Perez Hilton, asked Miss California a question regarding her views on gay marrage.  Aparently she answered that in her belief system that she thought marrage should be between a man and a woman.  Perez, responded to this later on after the pagent on a video blog about how outraged he was and other homosexuals around the world.  Perez was then interviewed on the Today show and he indicated that he thought the contestent was stupid and a bi*ch.  He did not understand why should could not have given a politically correct answer to make everyone comfortable such as saying that she is leaving her beliefs out of the question and that she is proud to live in a country where we are allowed to make such changes to our country such as gay marrage.  Miss California was then interviewed after Perez and told Matt Lauer that she would not change her answer if she had a choice and that she is proud for standing up for her religous convictions.

I find it really interesting that this happens the same week as our Boy Meets Boy discussion.  I think it is really up for debate whether Miss California should have been given lower scores for giving her personal opinion.  Perhaps Perez' question should have been thrown out because either way your answer it, somone is not going to be happy with the answer.

Opressive words in Literature

Over the past few weeks my ENG21o class as been discussing the book There Eyes Are Watching God.  During class a student was reading a passage with the "N" word in it.  As she read she changed the "N" word to black.  This ended up spuring a huge controversy in our class.  Our teacher believed that as we are in a college setting we should feel comfortable reading the word and by not reading the word just gives it more power.

In my opinion I agree with this logic, however I don't think that people should feel forced to read the word if it makes them uncomfortable.