When Carrie Prejean answered a question about her faith honestly and politely on the Miss America pageant and Perez Hilton called her a bitch (and worse) for answering the question he’d asked, I expected a firestorm but things seemed to die down. But even before the smear attacks on Prejean, this incident was an example of why, even when my politics are to the left, I prefer dealing with people on the right.

I agree with Mr. Hilton that gay marriage should be legal. I, however, realize that I’m in the minority. Even in California I’m demonstratively in the minority: we passed a proposition just last year forbidding gay marrage. The President of the United States also disagrees with me, as does the Vice President. So, unlike Hilton, I appreciate Miss California’s polite statement of her opinion after having been asked. It shouldn’t be an excuse to hurl sexual slurs and insults.

And it definitely isn’t a reason for the media to go digging into her medical records or insinuating raciness that isn’t there. Or digging into her parents’ divorce and airing that to the world.

What’s up with the media these days? They’ve never been reliable but they didn’t used to be this viciously dishonest other than to President Bush. Is there a void of hatred they need filled now that he’s gone? I wonder if some of them don’t secretly wish that Palin had won, just so they’d have an outlet for their hatred inside the beltway.

What did Joe Wurzelbacher do to deserve vitriol, lies, and smears from the press? Ask a better question than they’d been asking, or have since? Did 17-year-old Bristol Palin and 18-year-old Levi Johnston really deserve the public scrutiny they received? It’s no wonder their marriage failed. It’s hard to imagine any young couple surviving what they went through unscathed.

Governor Palin’s been the subject of unrelenting spurious attacks ever since she became the Vice Presidential nominee; there was more reporting on her family than there was on the Democratic Presidential nominee’s policies. Even 5-month-old Trig Palin became a target for their crazed hatred, at the Atlantic of all places. And it’s still going on!

Now Carrie Prejean has incurred the news media’s wrath. Why? Her answer was as polite as an answer can be and still disagree with me. Was it the applause she received? Or just the fact that she must have known she was throwing the pageant by answering honestly? Honesty seems to frighten them.

Heh. Or maybe they’re worried that politics will become a beauty contest with youth and looks trumping experience and competence.

From Joe the Plumber to the Palins, the “free” press decided that anyone who posed an electoral threat to Obama deserved a media thrashing. Now they’ve continued their blood frenzy after the election. That leads down a very dark road. It leads to the press becoming a willing arm enforcing government dictates. And it means that the White House can threaten opponents with media smear campaigns.

One of my clients was directly threatened by the White House and in essence compelled to withdraw its opposition to the deal under the threat that the full force of the White House Press Corps would destroy its reputation if it continued to fight.

Completely unbelievable last year; there’s no way that the press would trash someone’s reputation just because that person opposed a White House project when Bush was President. Today? I don’t know. I don’t want to believe it. But I’ve already seen it happen. And in the end it doesn’t really matter whether the news media would go that far; all that matters is that it’s a credible threat for the White House to wield. Would you take that chance?