Lynn Vincent – Palin’s ghost writer interviews Carrie Prejean

This is an interview that I’d like to think Lynn Vincent wishes she could take back.

Lynn Vincent is best known as a features writer for World Magazine and for co-authoring a couple of controversial books with former Washington Times writer Robert Stacey McCain and fundamentalist retired Lieutenant General William G. Boykin. She has also written a best seller which may be turned into a movie.
She has written over 1000 articles for World Magazine and her neoconservative views are well known.

I don’t know what the contract is with Harper Collins in regards to Vincent doing interviews around Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue. After all as the writer of the book, she is the one who brought it in on time, and as an experienced writer would have as good an understanding about fact-checking and content as anyone at the publishing house.

So before the Palin book tour circus starts, I want to take a quick look at the article Lynn Vincent did for Andrew Breitbart with Carrie Prejean. There is no way this was done prior to the more substantial Christianity Today article, the TMZ revelations, the Larry King appearance. I say no way because Vincent, whatever her political views, is not a careless writer. This interview is boilerplate and stale, and over a week behind reality and not something I’d expect Vincent to churn out.

One of the first things we learn is Vincent and Prejean go to the same church. How often and if they’ve met before isn’t mentioned, The Rock is an independent  mega church  in San Diego with a congregation of  several thousand.

Right away, Vincent attempts to establish a woman to woman conversation with Carrie Prejean, carefully explaining how much she likes her gay family and friends and a gay poster at World Magazine blog which Vincent used to moderate. ( shucks,we’re both victims of the new left media)  Vincent scolds and teases over what appears to be a desire for an interview with Andrew Sullivan so she can show how tolerant she is.

I know a little about what that’s like. In late September, HarperCollins announced that it had bumped up the publication date for Sarah Palin’s memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life, to November 17. As Sarah’s collaborative writer, I suddenly became a target (the left having running out of original ways to insult the former Alaska governor herself.)

Andrew Sullivan, who blogs at The Atlantic’s website, read my arguments in favor of traditional marriage, and summarily crowned me a “fanatical homophobe.” Others, to use Perez Hilton’s term, followed suit.

Had Sullivan bothered to reach out for a reasoned dialogue, I might’ve shared with him that my sister Lori, an articulate, politically active lesbian on the progressive left, has had with me some pretty productive discussions on gay marriage. That for me, it’s about more than “the Bible tells me so”; it’s about the collision of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

I might’ve shared with Sullivan that the maid of honor at my wedding was my best friend, CM, and her longtime lesbian partner. Sure CM looked a little athletic schlepping down the aisle in her 1980’s tea-length, peach satin dress with dyed-to-match pumps. But then neither one of us walks like Carrie Prejean.

…Who, incidentally, learned her sexy pageant walk from a gay man.

The language, “she’s a smoking hot California babe” etc is classic American pop/slang, this is written for a general US audience, not a churched one which would the frequent World magazine site. And that is part of the difficulty. In touching on what Vincent sees as faith (not politicized religion) she buys into and sells Prejean’s victim narrative and doesn’t bother to question Prejean’s claim the supposed sex tape were done when Prejean was 17.
That there are reports of more than one tape, the tape(s) were made when Prejean was an adult etc., don’t factor into the Breitbart interview.
Vincent doesn’t  question much of anything.

The rest of the interview could have been lifted from Prejean’s appearance on ABC’s The View, or Fox’s Sean Hannity. Essentially Vincent goes along with Prejean blaming everyone else.  Bringing faith into the interview does neither one of them any favours. The classic we have gay friends routine glosses over the deeper human rights issues by citing ‘biblical worldview’.

LV: I want to touch on the issue of your faith since it’s obviously the defining thread that runs through your life. I was interested to read in your book that at the state level, at the Miss California pageant, the judges actually praised you for talking about your faith. And then you move on to Miss USA and you have your handlers, like Moakler, telling you, “Don’t talk about God! Don’t talk about God!” What was that like for you?

CP: That was difficult. It was very difficult. I was dealing with people who didn’t think the same way that I did. So from the very beginning it was a challenge, but I learned to deal with it.

Prejean’s disastrous book tour was about her perceived victim-hood, her belief she is persecuted and special, her delusions, her desperate attempt to stay in a spotlight. ‘Don’t talk about God’ is De Moss Group PR and Rock Church reinforcement. This style of interview isn’t going to help Vincent when the Palin book hits the stores.

Let’s face it ladies, nobody can work a pair of pumps like the right gay man. And it was an openly gay man named Jim (whom Carrie describes in Stilling Standing as “wonderful”) who transformed her from lanky athlete to slinky siren, and taught her not to lope across the pageant stage like a giraffe. And it was also a gay man, Keith Lewis, who courted Carrie to compete for Miss California, then Miss USA – a man Carrie thought at the time had her best interests at heart.

See, the irony is that people like Carrie and I can be confidantes and even best friends with the gays and lesbians in our lives. We can be in mentoring relationships, like Carrie and Jim. We can collaborate on ideas, as I did with “Anlir,” a gay commenter whose ideas I often adopted when I managed World Magazine’s evangelical-focused blog. We can even be accepting of our family members’ sexuality.

But if we dare to differ on the issue of gay marriage, then the truth about our actual relationships with gays and lesbians is ignored, liberals’ clairvoyant “insight” into our hearts and minds is substituted as fact, and our protestations are filed mockingly under the “some of my best friends” defense.

In Lynn Vincent’s world Christians just have to be against same sex marriage, anti-abortion and racist, or we just aren’t Christian enough. That a good writer would throw out a gullible a woman to woman (ohhh! we go to the same church!) victim us/them interview and get so blindsided is pathetic. Carrie and Jim? Huh? Did Vincent fact-check?

It would be interesting to see what Vincent has to say now that Prejean is exiting stage left as the narcissist she has been shown to be. There is no talk of accountability, morality, facts are thin, faith gets cheapened. I don’t know if this interview was thrown together for a few quick bucks or not, but I’m not holding my breath waiting for Vincent to tackle the tougher and real faith issues the Prejean romp in the public square brings up. The themes of Vincent’s books are more about human optimism and can do Americanism than true redemption; never surrender, stay standing, don’t give up, I did it my way.