Former Miss USA runner-up Carrie Prejean Boller is riding the conservative culture war back to semi-relevance after videos of her paying children money for not wearing coronavirus masks stirred outrage online.
Ms Prejean Boller is an outspoken Republican and Donald Trump supporter. She famously lost the Miss USA crown in 2009 after she said told judge Perez Hilton she believed marriage was only between a man and a woman.
Ej Dickson in Rolling Stone examined how Ms Prejean Boller has been using her limited notoriety to push conservative talking points online. Recently, the former beauty queen began giving money to individuals who were either unmasked or who would agree to take off their masks while inside retail stores.
She called the face coverings “muzzles” and encouraged children to become “leaders” by refusing to wear their masks in the classroom, even in defiance of their teachers.
“You’re the next Rosa Parks. You’re the next Martin Luther King,” she tells a child in one of her videos. “Tomorrow when you go to school unmasked, your heart’s gonna be racing and you’re gonna be nervous. But I want you to know you’re doing the right thing. Don’t ever, ever question it.”
Ms Prjean Boller also gives the child's parents money as well.
Other videos on her channel include interviews with teens about their views on masks. In one a teenager complains that they can't breathe while wearing the face coverings and that he was tired of his teachers harassing him about them.
As with any kind of pre-recorded, agenda-driven piece of video media, it is a virtual certainty that Ms Prejean Boller is conducting other interviews in which she is either ignored or does not receive the responses she wants. Those are discarded, and she keeps the videos that uphold her worldview for use on the channel.
Ms Prejean Boller lives in San Diego, and has railed at her state's Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, for himself attending an event without a mask. Mr Newsom was spotted at a San Francisco 49ers game without his mask recently.
Mr Newsom said he removed the mask for the photo.
“The rest of the time, I wore it as we all should,” he said. “I encourage everybody else to do so.”
Earlier this month California's public health officials extended the state's existing mask mandate through 15 February.
Ms Prejean Boller was contacted for comment by EJ Dickson of Rolling Stone, but told the reporter she would only participate if the woman sent her “statistically significant data showing the benefits of children wearing medical or cloth masks”.
“Send me your research and data you have that supports the need for children to wear masks,” she wrote to Rolling Stone. “We're following in Gov Gavin Newsom's footsteps. The game is over.”
