May 6, 2009 | 3:32 pm

Miss California getting more scrutiny than the president

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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More on nearly naked Miss California, this time from Beliefnet’s Catholic blog Via Media:

it says quite a bit when “the media” subjects Miss California to more intense questioning on issues than it does the President of the United States.

(Who, by the way, agrees with Miss California, according to what he said during the campaign.)

The oddness of the moment is only deepened by the fact that Focus on the Family originally titled their interview with her airing next week “A Modern Esther.”

They changed it - it’s now “Carrie Prejean: Standing Strong.”)

This was Amy Welborn’s reflection after opening with a quote from The Huffington Post that she, oddly, found herself agreeing with. Michael Rowe had written in a lengthy post:

Only in America would the notion of a nearly-naked fundamentalist Christian beauty queen tossing her processed hair as she parades brand new, pageant-bought plastic breasts across a Las Vegas stage in front of millions of television viewers with all the modesty of a blue ribbon heifer at a county livestock fair (the same fundamentalist Christian beauty queen who would later tell a television reporter that she heard God whispering in her ear as she answered a celebrity-worshipping Internet gossip columnist’s question about gay marriage) be treated as anything other than an occasion for high comedy and mirth.

I guess I agree with most of that too. Except I wouldn’t call Carrie Prejean a fundamentalist, and I doubt she would either. Miss California is a socially and theologically conservative Christian, likely of the evangelical ilk. But, as I’ve written before, “while fundamentalists are certainly evangelicals, most evangelicals are not fundamentalists.”

In the video above, Prejean talks with her pastor, Miles McPherson of The Rock—again, a conservative but not fundamentalist San Diego megachurch. For a 53-minute version of their conversations in front of the congregation April 26, click here.