The once-scandalous celebrity sex tape took its fatal jump over the shark this week, after gay-marriage-opposing, famously breast-implanted author and Miss USA contestant Carrie Prejean confirmed the existence of a naughty tape of herself.
The tape came to light last week, when TMZ.com reported that the dethroned Miss California abruptly dropped her suit against pageant officials after a video of the self-described "prude" enjoying a little solo pleasure emerged. TMZ reported today that Miss Prejean's mother has been treated to a viewing of this private tape -- she was allegedly present when California pageant officials trotted out their proverbial ace in the hole.
Flogging her book "Still Standing" on the "Today" show this morning, Prejean brushed off the term "sex tape." She described the footage as "me by myself, there was no one else with me. I was not having sex," failing to consider that "me by myself" qualifies as sex for roughly 80 percent of the Internet population.
The news of Prejean's one-woman show comes the same week Jennifer Lopez hit her ex-husband with a fat $10 million lawsuit over his attempts to peddle footage from their 1997 honeymoon and Colin Farrell's antics with a Playboy model have resurfaced. In a world where Fred Durst has a sex tape, is there anybody left who doesn't?
Kids, back in the day, a sex tape used to mean something. There was expensive equipment to set up and hide, cassettes to load, storyboards to be drawn. It was a big freaking deal when Rob Lowe had a romp with underage girls or Pam Anderson and Tommy Lee enjoyed connubial bliss (if that's what you call it). Sex in front of a camera was still considered something porn stars did, and breaking that barrier was exciting -- and blurry.
Today, anybody can just aim the phone at the interesting bits and upload the results before they even finish. So much for our happy ending.
The celebrity sex tape -- as well as its close kin, the much forwarded naked snapshot -- started veering toward that fabled shark tank in June of 2004. That's when "1 Night in Paris" made its Web debut. Unlike other stars who'd been caught knocking boots, Paris Hilton didn't adopt a demeanor of scandalized abasement when her video emerged. Instead, she shrugged it off with the same bored lack of interest she'd displayed during her coital performance. Her career didn't suffer. Her fame didn't abate. On the contrary -- it skyrocketed.
In the ensuing years, compromising footage of the quasi-famous has become as commonplace as conspiracy theorists at a town meeting. And amazingly, it's proved an effective way of giving Hollywood has-beens a jolt of, well, exposure. Are you a Dirty Sanchez-dispensing, former "Saved by the Bell" cast member? Are you a man whose most famous role is playing a character called "McSteamy"? Smoke a little weed, head for the hot tub and don't forget to invite a friend. (Sweeps week crossovers await! ) Is your last name "Kardashian"? That and a little raw footage can get you your own perfume line. Excuse me, I have to go roll my eyes and yawn in an exaggerated manner now.
With each new revelation of a dirty video lurking in a famous closet, the shock at the genre itself dies a little more. Had honeymoon movies of J.Lo emerged when she married her ex in 1997, it might have been a cause célèbre. Now? Big whoop. The explicit sex tape and the compromising photo are no longer potential career ruiners, nor are they the hallmark of a wild, anything-goes character -- not when so many of us, famous and not, have been there and done that. It's a fair assumption that if there aren't explicit images of you floating around somewhere, you may not have a sex life. Or a phone.
While it's easy to enjoy a moment of delectable schadenfreude watching right-wing sweetheart Carrie Prejean, who says in her new memoir that "We should earn respect and admiration for our hearts, not for showing skin to look sexy," tell Meredith Vieira about "the biggest mistake of my life," it shouldn't really come as any surprise. Prejean may be a smug, backward-thinking idiot, but she's not the whore of Babylon. So when Prejean kvetched on the "Today" show that "nothing is private," she may have sounded whiny -- but she wasn't wrong. Some people learn it in more public and embarrassing ways than others, of course (like having your mom and some lawyers watch the footage you made for her boyfriend). But what Prejean did isn't different from anything many, many people are doing in their homes and hotels and dorms right this minute, alone or with a friend or two. Deviants, perverts, married couples, teenagers and "normal, churchgoing" folks like Carrie Prejean -- we are all sexual beings, and we don't need to send our images to the Fotomat for processing anymore. Stuff's bound to happen. Prejean wanted to be Miss USA. Turns out she's everywoman after all.
For about 30 seconds during this video of Carrie Prejean on "Larry King Live," I felt a twinge of sympathy for the gay marriage-opposing, sex tape-making, boob job loan-defaulting dethroned beauty queen-cum-author. King presses her to explain why she chose to settle with the Miss USA pageant, rather than move forward with her lawsuit against them (and their countersuit against her), and she says there's a confidentiality agreement that prohibits her from speaking about it. Larry's all, "But surely, that can't stop you from telling us why you chose to settle!" and she's all, "Confidential. Don't wanna talk about it. Move on, jerk." (I paraphrase.) They repeat that basic exchange a couple of times. And at this point, I am firmly on team Prejean -- her previous comments about Sarah Palin's awesomeness and everything else, ever, aside -- because it really doesn't matter whether she can legally answer the question or not; she's made it abundantly clear she won't. Occasionally, badgering a recalcitrant interviewee can be a slick journalistic move, when said interviewee is actually an important personage hiding something worth digging for. But when she's a conservative beauty queen whose 15 minutes should have been up months ago, nobody really cares, and relentlessly pursuing the same question just makes you look like a bully who can't roll with the punches. "Larry, you're being inappropriate," Prejean keeps repeating, and while that's not necessarily the word I'd use, I can respect her for refusing to take the bait.
Fortunately, the world has not completely turned upside down, so my respect for Carrie Prejean is a short-lived thing. Because Larry does move on, to a caller, and that's when she throws a tantrum, removing her microphone and threatening to walk out. Except she doesn't walk. She just sits there all, "What? Can't hear you!" and "LARRY, YOU'RE BEING INAPPROPRIATE!" which has by now become a serious pot/kettle issue.
So I give her an A for the "stubbornly refusing to answer a question I don't like" maneuver, but a D for the "storming off in a huff" one. To pull the latter off successfully, you need to A) pick the right time and B) follow through, or else C) have such a dramatic meltdown the context becomes irrelevant. She and her handlers need to work on that a bit more. But then again, the half-assed meltdown she did have was enough to get our attention, and here I am writing about it, so her natural knack for prolonging those 15 minutes can evidently still overcome any lack of artistry. Dammit. Enjoy the video.
Former Miss California USA Carrie Prejean calls a sex tape she made for an ex-boyfriend several years ago "the biggest mistake of my life."
Prejean (pray-ZHAHN') told Fox News on Monday and NBC's "Today" show on Tuesday that she shot the X-rated video of herself alone when she was 17 and sent it to a boyfriend.
The 22-year-old tells NBC: "It was for private use, but does that justify what I did? No. It was the biggest mistake of my life."
Prejean was fired in June. She believes she lost her crown because of her opposition to gay marriage. Pageant organizers said she was skipping official events.
Earlier this month, Prejean and organizers reached a confidential settlement. She tells NBC that she has suffered "a campaign against me to try to silence me."
Ex-Miss California Carrie Prejean is being taken to court ... over her breasts. K2 Productions, the organizer of the Miss California USA pageant, is suing the dethroned beauty queen for failing to pay back a $5,200 loan for a boob job. She elected for the plastic surgery to make her "more competitive" at the Miss USA pageant (and perhaps it did make her more competitive, but of course it didn't save her from losing in April after voicing her personal opposition to same-sex marriage).
The complaint filed Monday goes after more than just her implants, staking additional claim to the proceeds from her book, and accusing her of "missing events" and "using her title without authorization to help promote the National Organization for Marriage's 'campaign of intolerance' against gay marriage," reports New York Daily News. It also takes issue with the semi-nude shots that surfaced during the Miss USA scandal: Prejean swore she was a minor in the photos and claimed she hadn't posed for any other raunchy snapshots -- but K2 Productions alleges she was of age in the shots and that far more explicit photos of Prejean exist and could surface at any moment. In other words: There is still more to come from this salacious spectacle.
Please, say it isn't so. If a lawsuit over breast implants isn't the ugliest this scandal can get, I'm not sure I can handle what's next.
We can all learn something from former beauty queens. Like, say you want to talk about healthcare reform on national television. Who better to bring in than Carrie Prejean, the controversial former Miss California who lost her crown earlier this year? That's what Fox News host Sean Hannity did on Friday.
In his defense, Hannity didn't bring Prejean to ask for her thoughts on the relative merits of the public option versus a co-op system or even the dreaded single-payer. Instead, he compared her situation -- she's become a hero on the right for her answer on same-sex marriage at the Miss USA pageant, and conservatives believe the left attempted to silence her -- to the controversy over protests at healthcare town halls.
It's very interesting in one sense, you were almost like the first casualty in this battle of somebody speaks out in America today, oh, they want to jump all over you," Hannity said. Later, he added, "Maybe this is a good lesson, because the people that — the Democrats are calling angry mobs like all these angry mobs are all around here. But maybe this will be an inspiration, because now there's an effort to intimidate people at these town hall meetings and silence them. And maybe people can learn from your lesson."
Now that's service journalism.
You didn't think the Carrie Prejean story would die that easily, did you? No, it was only a matter of time — a few hours, really — before the good-time conservatives at the National Organization for Marriage cried foul. NOM has issued the following dramatic statement in defense of Prejean, who famously appeared in one of its ads attacking gay marriage, and who it insists is being robbed, robbed we say:
"Hollywood hates Carrie. First they abuse her, then they try to get her to recant, then they threw mud, and now they are doing what they wanted to do from day one: Get rid of Carrie.
"This cover story about a contract dispute doesn’t pass the smell test. Americans aren’t fooled that easily. God knows, and we know, the truth about Carrie: She’s a young woman of great beauty who chose truth over the glittering tiara that Hollywood offers," said Brian Brown, Executive Director for NOM. "Of course they will try to punish her, but we know she will be fine in the end, because her values are in the right place."
"Hollywood will dance its tribal war dance over her body — the hatred generated against her has been extraordinary — but Carrie will be free to define her own mission and message from now on. Congratulations," stated Maggie Gallagher, President for NOM.
Meanwhile, Prejean has told TMZ that Miss USA pageant head Keith Lewis asked her to pose "semi-nude" for Playboy (Lewis says he was just "passing the offer along.") It's a bit odd, since semi-nude portraiture was part of the imbroglio that landed Prejean in trouble with pageant officials in the first place and since it was an appearance in a similar nudie mag (Penthouse) that caused Vanessa Williams' ousting from the Miss America pageant in 1984. But then again, I don't suspect any of you were looking for moral clarity in this particular story.
Sometimes, beauty queens don't get fired for topless photos, or speaking out against gay marriage, or their tussles with Perez Hilton, or any of the various tabloid controversies they generate. Sometimes they just get fired for not showing up to work.
At least that seems to be the case with Carrie Prejean, who was canned today, according to TMZ, for being a "no-show" and for "violating her contract by not getting clearance to do her extracurricular stuff." Sounds like somebody was sneaking out of the house without telling dad.
So goodbye, beauty queen Prejean. And hello, Miss Malibu, Tami Farrell, who will be replacing Prejean at car shows and ribbon cuttings across California. The firing has hopefully put an end to the most exhausting beauty pageant controversy, well, ever. Of course, as Vanessa Williams knows, sometimes losing your crown isn't so bad. Sometimes it leads to modest singing careers and celebrity endorsements and a starring role on "Ugly Betty." So chin up, Carrie Prejean: I'm sure "Fox & Friends" will be calling you soon.
King
Carrie Prejean Owes Pageant $5,200 for Her Melons