Media outlets across the country have chastised Morgan for poor judgment and crass comments. The insinuation is that some form of slander occurred, but did it? According to Regis Ketamine, leading sociologist at San Narciso College, the burden of proof rests on Sarah Palin to establish that she is somehow not masturbation material.
Palin as Beauty Queen
Palin attended Wasilla High School where she became the head of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and a member of the girls’ basketball and cross country running teams. During her senior year, she was co-captain of the basketball team that won the 1982 Alaska state championship. But Palin abandoned her pursuit of music and sports in 1984 when she entered and won the Miss Wasilla beauty pageant. She also finished third in the Miss Alaska pageant, playing flute in the talent portion of the contest because she feared responding to questions about geography and world affairs.
A former classmate explained, “Sarah always had trouble remembering the location of countries around the world. During the 1980s, at the height of the Cold War, she would sit in her backyard with binoculars and report on the movements of Soviet troops. She was consumed by this, even though she was just watching people outside a post office in Anchorage, which is southwest of Wasilla. She also didn’t understand history very well. She thought the Founding Fathers had not only written the Pledge of Allegiance, but also that they had abolished slavery. My guess is that she didn’t understand that the Bill of Rights was written a long time after. And the pageant judges didn’t allow her to write answers on the palms of her hands, so she stuck with the flute.”
Palin as Sex Object
It is precisely Palin’s participation in numerous beauty contests that, Ketamine argues, invalidates her indignation with Tracy Morgan’s comments.
“A beauty contest, or beauty pageant, is a competition based primarily on the physical beauty of its contestants,” stated Ketamine. “Originally, during times when censorship laws forbade a woman’s bare flesh to be shown, the pageant justified exposure by making the case that judges needed to see the ‘real’ woman underneath the garments. This increased the popularity of pageants and the profits to the owners. You must remember, the oldest beauty contests in America were orchestrated as a way to attract tourism and cash. Barnum used them to draw crowds of horny men to his circus. Delaware used bathing beauty contests to bring summer tourists to the state’s businesses.”
Ketamine concluded that the prurient display of naked flesh for the sole purpose of generating revenue is the basic definition of pornography.
“Pornography is the portrayal of physical subject matter for the purposes of sexual excitement and erotic satisfaction, usually for a fee,” Ketamine continued. “Sexual attractiveness, or sex appeal, denotes one individual’s ability to attract the sexual or erotic interest of another. The attraction is almost entirely physical. It may involve a person’s looks, movements, voice, smell, or other factors. The attraction may be enhanced by a person's adornments, clothing, perfume, and hair style. So, if you’ve put yourself on display in a beauty contest, wearing revealing clothing and lots of makeup, and the intent is to be judged on the basis of your outward appeal, you have in essence allowed yourself to be the object of erotic or sexual desires.”
What does this mean in context of the Morgan incident? Ketamine says that Morgan was stating, for all intents and purposes, a fact: Sarah Palin is masturbation material.
“Not only is she masturbation material,” Ketamine said, “she has obligingly positioned herself as such. For a woman who wants so much attention, who wants to be a celebrity, who wants to be adored, I would think knowing millions of men are fantasizing about you is the flattery you were seeking. Because Lord knows, they aren’t staring at that belligerent shrew because they want to discuss geopolitics, bask in the glory of her shrill Yooper twang, hunt defenseless pack animals from a Piper, or struggle through a lesson on revisionist history.”
“But I’ll take this a step further. Her flute playing. We all know the implications of that. We’ve all seen ‘American Pie.’ When you think about a flute, you arrive at the same innuendo: deviant band camp hi-jinks and a skilled set of lips. It’s phallic, frankly. I don’t even want to get into the tea bag thing. I say it’s her own fault. More than an attorney, I think she needs a good image consultant. Preferably someone who’s not Russ Meyer.”
According to sources at NBCU, Morgan might be facing additional legal problems. His “30 Rock” co-star Tina Fey, who often parodies Sarah Palin in her sketch comedy shows, has discussed filing a defamation suit against Morgan for not considering her masturbation material.
