The Carrie Prejean sex tape’s fate

Carrie Prejean is dropping her million-dollar discrimination lawsuit against Miss California USA after pageant officials reportedly confronted the dethroned beauty queen with a sex tape. Several gossip and adult entertainment sites claim to have seen Prejean’s sex video but passed on posting it because, as the gossip site TMZ says, it’s “too racy.” But given the pattern of so many other compromising celebrity videos, isn’t the Prejean sex tape destined to appear on the Internet anyway? (Watch celebrities react to Carrie Prejean's sex tape in a roundtable discussion.)

Give it to us, we’ll run it: This kind of aversion to salaciousness on TMZ's part is surprising, says Hamilton Nolan in Gawker, but “kudos” to the site “on its newfound virtue.” After all, TMZ has bought similar material in the past and posted it. That said, “if they don't want the tape, I reckon” Gawker will take it.

“TMZ far too modest to run sex tape”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The whole saga is too stupid for words: Before filing her ill-fated lawsuit, Prejean should have understood that “if you videotape yourself having sex, people will find it,” says Mark Lorenz at Manolith. Not that they’re guaranteed a good show. Curiosity may drive people to seek out the explicit video, but “celebrity sex tapes usually are terrible. I don’t know what the attraction is.”

“Soon you will see Carrie Prejean’s sex tape”

Sounds like a setup: The appearance of the "alleged" tape in the middle of the lawsuit is suspicious, says Donald Douglas at American Power, especially given Prejean's outspoken social conservatism. "There's been too much funny stuff going on throughout this scandal; and such a resolution is just too perfect for Ms. Prejean's enemies."

"Too perfect: Alleged Prejean sex tape brings close to lawsuit"

Let the people decide: I'll be "curious to see the fallout" for Prejean, says the blogger Jammie Wearing Fool. "As to [the video] being so racy, I'd like to be the judge of that."

"Prejean ambushed with sex video"