Good riddance to the now-former member of Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission.
If you’ve been around on the internet for long enough, you’ve likely encountered Dave Burge (known to police authorities as “Iowahawk”) and his ironclad “Law of Institutions”: the inevitable three-step political process whereby ideologically deranged activists “(1) target a respected institution, (2) kill and clean it, and (3) wear it as a skin suit, while demanding respect.” We naturally identify this tale closely with the activist left’s long march through academia and the world of NGOs. (See, e.g. the recent collapses of the Audubon Society, Sierra Club, the ACLU, and every other left-coded organization pillaged by the forces of Wokeness during the politics of the post-Floyd era.)
But the impulse is a more than merely a progressive one. It’s a human vanity, and we can see it playing out in real time with the disgraceful behavior of Carrie Prejean Boller, a forgotten Miss USA pageant beauty queen contestant. Prejean’s public cancellation back in 2009 — for voicing the mildest possible public disagreement with gay marriage — was once a cause célèbre on the right during the opening year of the Obama administration, and a harbinger of social feeding frenzies to come. (Ironically enough, it was none other than Donald Trump who fired her.)
Maybe he was feeling a little residual guilt about how the whole thing went down, because Prejean Boller (now married) was given an appointment on President Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, an interfaith “working group” assembled to articulate the administration’s political principles on this very important matter. Prejean, an extremely recent (and ostentatious) convert to Catholicism, has apparently decided that her faith dictates opposition to the existence of the Jewish state, and the denunciation of all “Zionist slaves,” by which she means people who believe in the Jewish state’s right to exist.
Yup, turns out she’s a lunatic antisemite! The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page shone a spotlight on Prejean yesterday, in a deliciously memorable piece denouncing her recent antics on the commission: On Monday, Prejean attended a hearing wearing a Palestinian flag pin and denouncing Jews as Christ-killers: “Ms. Prejean Boller demanded to know whether she could be called antisemitic because her Catholic faith supposedly precludes her from supporting Zionism and tells her the Jews killed Jesus.”
In her defense, Prejean cited to the authority of Candace Owens, whom she claimed an intellectual kinship with. (“I listen to her daily. She’s not an antisemite. Catholics don’t embrace Zionism, you know.”) When fellow commissioner — and Catholic — Ryan Anderson refuted her with citations to the Vatican Council’s Nostra aetate and the pronouncements of several recent popes, she sought to link her attacks to “what Israel has done in Gaza.”
And from Prejean’s next moves, it seems fairly obvious that this play was a premeditated provocation. She’s seeking to break into a tough business, after all — the alt-right influencer world is dog-eat-dog — and she has apparently decided this might be her ticket to the big time. So Prejean responded instantly to the WSJ piece by enthusiastically predicting her own firing, eagerly begging for a public “martyrdom” that will elevate her profile.
“Can you even imagine this?,” tweeted the recent convert, “A Religious Liberty Commission prepared to fire a commissioner for her Catholic faith? If that happens, it proves their mission was never religious liberty, but a Zionist agenda. I refuse to resign.” Later: “I will continue to stand against Zionist Supremacy in America. I’m a proud Catholic. I, in no way will be forced to embrace Zionism as a fulfillment of biblical prophesy [sic]. I am a free American. Not a slave to a foreign nation.”
And now she’s gone. As I was writing this piece, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick — chairman of Trump’s commission — announced that Prejean had been removed: “No member of the Commission has the right to hijack a hearing for their own personal and political agenda on any issue. This is clearly, without question, what happened Monday in our hearing on antisemitism in America. This was my decision.”
Good riddance. Perhaps Carrie Prejean is just flush with the cloddish zeal of a new and profoundly stupid convert. Or maybe she is making a crude bid for lasting notoriety in a niche alt-right media ecosystem already glutted with big-haired blondes. Who am I to say? (If, as I expect, Prejean now makes the rounds and does appearances with the usual network of podcasting suspects — Candace Owens, Dave Smith, Megyn Kelly, etc. — then I think you’ll have your answer.) Either way, her stupidity and ignorance disgrace and discredit herself. I can’t wait for the inevitable Tucker interview.