Gregory Kane: No surprise that Miss Mexico won Miss Universe

By: Gregory Kane
Examiner Columnist
September 1, 2010

Shame, shame, shame on you if you didn't know Miss Mexico was going to win the Miss Universe pageant.

I knew it the very second Jimena Navarrete was announced as one of the 15 semifinalists. Was this some ESP on my part, some inside knowledge or special expertise?

Nah. I'm just leery of anything Donald Trump has a hand in, especially after what happened after the last two Miss USA pageants. In 2009, Miss California, Carrie Prejean, gave an honest but politically incorrect answer to a question about gay marriage.

She didn't win.

In 2010, Rima Fakih, Miss Michigan, stumbled during one segment of the Miss USA pageant and gave a perfectly idiotic answer about contraceptives during the Q&A segment. Fakih DID win. Anybody notice a pattern?

The day after Fakih's "victory" (wink, wink), some news outlets praised the fact that an immigrant had won the crown. And during a time of "anti-immigrant" sentiment in America, no less.

Fakih's victory came after the Arizona Legislature passed that state's SB 1070, the "anti-immigrant" law supposedly targeted at Latinos, in general, and Mexicans, in particular. So was it that fantastic a leap of logic to conclude that once Ms. Navarrete was announced as a semifinalist in the Miss Universe Pageant that she was going to win the darned thing?

Now some may accuse me of claiming that Trump, who owns the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants, is up to hanky-panky. Or that the judges he selected have no integrity and were in on some kind of fix.

I'm saying no such thing. But I am saying that I detect the whiff of rodent somewhere.

There seems to be a pattern to these Miss Universe Pageants of late. Latina contestants predominate among the semifinalists. Contestants from black African countries rarely make the list of 15 semifinalists. Ditto for those from most Asian countries.

It's as if the judges have done some prejudging and concluded that the contestants from black African countries look too African and the ones from Asian countries look too Asian. Since judges don't want to be accused of favoring whites, they select Latinas, who can be regarded as some sort of happy medium.

Normal folks don't see it that way. Viewers who went online before the contest judged that Miss Thailand was the most photogenic and had the best costume for a contestant's native country. Those viewers had better eyes than the judges.

For my money, Miss Thailand should have won the whole kit and caboodle, but she didn't even make the final 15. I thought Miss Jamaica, first runner-up to Miss Mexico, was clearly the superior contestant among the finalists.

But I knew a dead dog would have a better chance of playing fetch than Miss Jamaica had of winning this year's pageant. It's been only four months since the passage of SB 1070.

Even less time has expired since Mexican President Felipe Calderon came to this country and presumed to lecture us about our immigration laws before admitting that his country deals with illegal immigrants by "sending back them." In the minds of those judges, I suspect, the time was just about right to send a message to Arizonans, Mexico and the world about what they think of SB 1070 and the state of Arizona.

I could be wrong, of course. But Prejean's losing the 2009 Miss USA title, and Fakih and Navarrete winning, respectively, the 2010 Miss USA and Miss Universe crowns, seems a little too coincidental to me.

Or, as the old saying goes: I was born at night, but not last night.

Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.


Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/No-surprise-that-Miss-Mexico-won-Miss-Universe-682835-101990553.html#ixzz0yLlaEIE1