I have never been a big fan of beauty pageants and it has probbaly been 30 plus years since I last watched one, but the last two Miss USA pageants have me wondeing what in the world is going on.

Just last year Carrie Prejean won the crown but was immediately embroiled in controversy over her answer to a question about gay marriage.  That firestorm was stirred up by gay blogger Perez Hilton  and the resulting publicity and some other revelations about Prejean led pageant officials to strip her of her crown.

This year Miss Oklahoma Morgan Elizabeth Woolard was asked a question on the Arizona immigration law by Hispanic actor Oscar Nunez from The Office and responded by saying that she believed in states rights and that Arizona had every right to pass the law but that she doesn’t believe in racial profiling.

At that point in the competition Woolard was leading the eventual winner Rima Fakih but fell to second after her answer.

Do you see a pattern here?  Get the gay guy to ask a question about gay marriage, get the Hispanic guy to ask the immigration question.  I’m not sure if that’s pandering or profiling but it’s obvious that pageant officials have tried to orchestrate questions like these in order to get a politically correct answer.

But in the case of Prejean and Woolard it didn’t go according to plan as they stood their ground and even though the gay marriage question wasn’t the reason Prejean lost her crown the controversy surrounding it drummed up by Hilton certainly didn’t help.  For Woolard it appears that her politically incorrect answer may have indeed cost her the crown as the last thing the pageant wanted was someone who would be seen as a racist for not bashing the AZ law.

Now pageant officials have a potential dilemma as it was discoverd that Miss Michigan Rima Fakih who beat Woolard won a pole dancing contest in 2007 which is probably not the type of image they were looking for either.  But if they decide that Fakih’s pole dancing is just cause for stripping her of her crown then Woolard will replace her and that may be even more unpalatable.

Maybe it’s time to eliminate the pageant altogether.  After all who would really miss it?

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