Miss California Won a Bigger Crown: The Crown of Integrity

It's not often that the runner-up in the Miss USA pageant wins so much notoriety, but Miss California Carrie Prejean has certainly done so with her now-famous answer to the gay-rights question on marriage.

For some reason, it's now important to ask the contestants questions that are more issue-oriented than a presidential press conference. When asked by Perez Hilton whether the rest of the United States should follow Vermont's lead and legalize same-sex marriage, she answered in the only way she knew how. She stood tall and told him what she believed: That marriage was meant to be between a man and a woman.

“In my country, and in my family, I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. ... I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised.”

That has created a firestorm on the left. Prejean has been ridiculed by numerous left-wing bloggers and media pundits. Rachel Maddow for the way she phrased her answer:

Perez Hilton, for his part, has skunked to ultimate lows on his blog, not only with his vile name-calling, but also with this truly idiotic posting:

You can't alienate your audience, especially if you're competing for the title of MISS USA! You need to represent the people, not just YOUR beliefs.

Huh? I guess we don't want anyone who might have a mind of her own? I thought that was the point of asking a contestant a question. Represent the people? Perez needs a reality check. According to a recent CBS News Poll, although six in 10 Americans think some form of legal recognition is appropriate for same-sex couples, only a third of Americans think those couples should be allowed to marry. So, in reality, she was representing the people. Or maybe for Perez, the voice of the people means only the minority of Americans who agree with him.

But most importantly, Prejean may have lost the Miss USA title, but she won something far more valuable. She demonstrated to all the value of integrity. She stood up, and with her dream on the line, told the world what she believes, even though it may had shattered that dream. She didn't insult the people who thought differently, she didn't call anyone names; she just had the guts to stand on stage and voiced her beliefs in a respectful manner.

She has told Access Hollywood that she is standing by her answer. I wouldn't have had it any other way. I stated an opinion that was true to myself, and that’s all I can do. It did cost me my crown. It is a very touchy subject and [Hilton] is a homosexual, and I see where he was coming from and I see the audience would’ve wanted me to be more politically correct. But I was raised in a way that you can never compromise your beliefs and your opinions for anything. I feel like I won.

Amen. She won the most important crown any of us can hope for. Her crown of integrity and honesty will last longer than a Miss USA crown, and it sure shines brighter than the garbage being thrown at her from people like Hilton.

Clinton Demands Iran Release Saberi Immediately

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton this morning demanded that Iran immediately release American journalist Roxana Saberi, who was tried behind closed doors and sentenced by a revolutionary court to eight years in prison on a spying charge.

"We believe she should be freed immediately, that the charges against her are baseless and that she has been subjected to a process that has been non-transparent, unpredictable [and] arbitrary," Clinton told reporters at the State Department.

"We hope that actions will be taken as soon as possible by the authorities in Iran, including the judiciary, to bring about the speedy release of Miss Saberi and her return home," she said, adding that the Obama administration is continuing to work with Swiss intermediaries who represent U.S. interests in Iran to secure her freedom.

"We are ... hoping that these remarks lead to actions," Clinton said, referring to Ahmadinejad's comment on Saberi's appeal.

Iran’s chief justice Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi Monday urged the judiciary to consider immediately an appeal.

Shahroudi has told Tehran’s justice department chief Abbas Ali Alizadeh that the accused has the right to appeal and fair trial, the IRNA news agency quoted judiciary spokesman Alireza Jamshidi as saying.

He asked Alizadeh to consider “all aspects of the case, including material and spiritual elements of the crime fairly, quickly and exactly”.

Hey, How About the Smaller Papers in the 2009 Pulitzers Today?

It's Pulitzer Day, as a select few will win the Holy Grail of journalism awards. The announcement is made at a press conference at Columbia University in New York City at 3 p.m. Eastern, but winners are notified earlier in the day as a courtesy.

One of my great pleasures as a journalist has been to be in newsrooms as announcements are made that colleagues have won. Newsday has won 19 Pulitzers, and has been a finalist 18 times. I was there for 19 of those 37 announcements, and each one was special. I also enjoyed the fact that I played a small role as news editor for two of the winning projects. (Just to be clear, the news editor has no substantial writing role in these projects, the prizes are for the reporters who justly deserve the credit. But I do have that pride of being part of the process nonetheless.)

I spent most of 2008 in either hospitals or recovering from surgeries so I did not have the opportunity or the strength to do a lot of reading. But the one thing I have learned is that you don't have to work for The New York Times or Washington Post to provide quality reporting. There's great journalism going on outside the Beltway and Manhattan. So, this year, watch out for the little guys! From what I saw, these are the projects I liked:

In Public Service: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's six-part series on toxins in everyday products and the failure of regulatory agencies to monitor them. "Chemical Fallout" looks at "chemicals in the packaging, surfaces or contents of many products may cause long-term health effects, including cancers of the breast, brain and testicles; lowered sperm counts, early puberty and other reproductive system defects; diabetes; attention deficit disorder, asthma and autism. A decade ago, the government promised to test these chemicals. It still hasn't."

In International News: McClatchy reporters Tom Lasseter and Matthew Schofield of McClatchy Newspapers wrote "Guantanamo: Beyond the Law," an eight-month investigation of the detention system created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that found that the U.S. imprisoned innocent men, subjected them to abuse, stripped them of their legal rights and allowed Islamic militants to turn the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, into a school for jihad.

In Feature Reporting: Joanna Connors of Cleavland Plain Dealer for "Beyond Rape: A Survivor's Story." Her editor, Susan Goldberg, describes the piece as such: Connors writes about a story she kept quiet about for more than 20 years: her chance encounter with a dangerous felon on parole; the nightmare of the trial; her subsequent years of coping and denial; and, finally, her search to find the man who raped her so she could try, at last, to move on from an incident that changed and scarred her life.

In Commentary: Chris Rose of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Rose has been receiving a lot of attention for his chronicles of the effect of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans since 2005, giving us in great detail the struggles that city and its residents have faced.

This year will be notable for at least one reason, it's the first year that prizes will be expanded to include many text-based newspapers and news organizations that publish only on the Internet. The Pulitzer Board also has decided to allow entries made up entirely of online content to be submitted in all 14 Pulitzer journalism categories. So this year, lets hear it from the smaller papers and online organizations.