AP Photo/Denis PoroyThere's something about Carrie Prejean that makes us suspicious.
Much as her book-flap copy might like to believe, our eyebrows are not cocked because of the former pageant queen's beliefs. Look, Sarah Palin's an acquired taste, too, but we're not driven to concoct wild theories about why she's doing Oprah next week. (In that case, we'd only be suspicious if Palin didn't do Oprah.)
So, no, it's not Prejean's ideas that make us think she's up to something. It's her timing.
As in, can you believe her sex-tape scandal broke four days before her book-flap copy—and the rest of the tome—was published?
We can't.
And can you believe Prejean appeared on Sean Hannity to talk about how humiliated she was to be talking on Sean Hannity about her sex-tape scandal—on the very same day Still Standing hit stores?
We can't.
To clarify, we can and do believe that both things happened because they did. But we are suspicious as to why they happened. And, more specifically, as to when they happened.
Let's say you're Carrie Prejean, and it's been a slow couple of months. At first you're grateful for the time away from the headlines, because, hey, you've got a book to write. Maybe you've even been thinking of reading one. Whatever. You've got work to do.
And then you're done. Your book about the trials and tribulations of being you are done, and you can't understand why it took Tolstoy, like, a hundred years to write War and Peace. Whatever. You've got a book to sell.
Ah, but now you've got a problem. You're old news. Your dustup with Perez Hilton seems like a million YouTube views ago. Your clashes with the Miss California organization are boring to anyone outside of the tiara circle. Your best publicity bet of the fall—the pageant people demand to be reimbursed for your breast-enhancement surgery—fizzles. (A busty beauty queen who's not 100 percent natural? How unnovel.)
You're stuck. And, worse, the clock is ticking. Your book is due out Nov. 9. Palin's Going Rogue—Going Rogue, oh, how you must envy that title!—is due out Nov. 17. That gives you only about a week to command the public's attention as the victim of the liberal press. What to do? How to top a former vice-presidential candidate who killed in the talent competition during her own pageant days?
Let's say you channel surf one night past Paris Hilton, Pamela Anderson and Kim Kardashian. And you pause to admire each woman's enduring fame. And you start to think. And you remember a little something-something you once made for a boyfriend you loved and cared about. And you decide to accidentally and not at all on purpose leave your little something-something on your roof, with a big, blinking neon sign that says "Absolutely Do Not Take This Tape of Me Pleasuring My Own Self to Smut Peddlers Who Might Leak Its Existence to the Press Right Around the Time of the Publication of My New Memoir, Still Standing, Available Everywhere Nov. 9."
Let's say you're brilliant—and you would've gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for our darned suspicions!
Then again…
We should really stop being so skeptical. Things happen. Coincidences happen. Sex tapes happen. The Lord, after all, does work in mysterious ways.