Sunday night, the 2016 Miss USA Pageant was held in Las Vegas with the usual array of beautiful young women and a musical performance by The Backstreet Boys. The contenders were a diverse group and for the first time, the last three finalists- Miss Hawaii, Miss Georgia and Miss District of Columbia-included two black women. The winner was Miss District of Columbia - the first winner serving in the U.S. military (Army Reserves).
So, it was a pageant of firsts - including inserting politics into the questioning of the finalists. When it came time for the big question posed to Miss Hawaii, the eventual second place winner, she was asked for whom she would cast her vote - Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.
"Chelsea Hardin acknowledged that there was no way to correctly answer the question during the beauty pageant. The question was framed with Clinton's likely status of being the first woman nominated by a major political party for the White House. Hardin responded that gender doesn't matter when deciding the next commander-in-chief. The 24-year-old college student from Honolulu simply said the new president should push for what's right for the country."
Unlike the writer of this account, I do not think she "punted" her answer. I think she handled it as gracefully as possible. And, good for her for not taking the bait. In this country, we have a private ballot and this pageant's winner is tasked with representing people throughout the country.
Clearly, this was a shot at Donald Trump, the former owner of the pageant and a kiss to Hillary Clinton, the first woman to be nominated by one of the two major political parties. No doubt the pageant owners and producers fall in line with the demand of liberal women - women have a duty to vote for Hillary. Fortunately, as we have seen in the voting statistics, young women feel no such obligation.
The reaction on social media was swift and angry when the question was asked. The audience loudly booed, too. The pageant had to tweet out an explanation that the question was written by the pageant organization, not the judge stuck with asking the question. Some of the bottom feeders in online journalism immediately took the question to be a slam to Trump.
I applaud any young woman not willing to allow liberal Hollywood to write the narrative.
