So who has the best answer on how to resolve the blunder of Miss Universe?
Not the great divider Donald Trump, who’s now attempting to be the great unifier. But more on that later in this space.
For now, if you were really Filipino at heart, then there is just one thing that explains what happened to Miss Philippines, Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach, on Sunday night.
Divine intervention. Prayers answered. What else? It had to be.
There was the German-Filipino beauty standing to the side with her consolation flowers wilting as Miss Colombia was crowned, only to find her half-German-Filipinoness plucked back into the limelight.
Does this happen during Christamastime without prayer?
A Filipino, of any degree, half-full-quarter-partial, knows. But most rational souls would simply say, “Did you see ‘Family Feud’-meister Steve Harvey’s massive blunder?”
Well did you?
Frankly, I was not a big fan of Ms. Wurtzbach initially in the competition. She seemed somewhat augmented as they say in the swimsuit comp. A little too bobble-heady in the strategic places if you know what I mean.
Of course, for those of us whose preferred body part is the exposed brain, I always watch these things for the high comedy of the “Big Question” section. This year we got the high comedy and the drama.
Miss Philippines got this question: “Do you think the United States should have a military presence in your country?”
Softball, right. Not exactly “Explain the Spratly Islands in 30 seconds or less.” And I doubt any Filipino politician can answer that any more effectively in an evening gown.
But there was Wurtzbach displaying her full colonial mentality:
“I think that the United States and the Philippines have always had a good relationship with each other,” Wurtzbach said. “We were colonized by the Americans and we have their culture and our traditions even up to this day, and I think that we are very welcoming with the Americans and I don’t see any problems with that at all.”
That must make her the darling of all Filipino nationalists!
But come on. She’s not running for president. She just wanted to be Miss Universe.
And so I gladly cut her some slack, and revert back to the time tested way any Filipino watches the Miss Universe pageant–as a Global Nationalist from wherever you are!
Like many American Filipinos, I grew up with beauty queens and pageants as part of my ethnic Filipino tradition. And then there are all the niche pageants we have. Ever been to a GAPA (Gay Asian Pacific Americans) pageant?
But Miss Universe is the Super Bowl of beauty pageants. It’s not regional. It’s not national. It’s not niche. It’s the whole damn Universe.
And besides, it’s not Donald Trump’s Universe anymore.
You’ve got to watch.
We have ancestral homeland rooting interests. One is ethnically obligated.
Just look at this year’s Asian diversity in the Top Ten: Miss Japan was a biracial beauty, Ariana Miyamoto; Miss Thailand, Aniporn Chalermburanawong; and a Miss Philippines with the un-Filipino sounding name of Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach. Born in Stuttgart to a German father and Filipina mother, Wurtzbach is both a model and a chef, which brings to mind a variation of the old Chinese food joke that may or may not work with Filipino German food? An hour later, you’re hungry for power?
Or just Miss Universe?
On Sunday, we were hungry for an explanation.
Miss Universe ended like the movie “Carrie,” but with no blood and telekinesis. Just a glaring host boo-boo that will be talked about for as long as there are sash-bearing pageants.
With comedian, author, talk host, game show host Steve Harvey at the helm, for the most part the show was fine. I mean, it’s not “Family Feud.” But when it came to naming the winner, from the time Harvey announced “Miss Universe 2015…,” there was a 12-second gap. And it wasn’t just for drama.
I think he was actually trying to figure out who the winner was as he opened the envelope. Though reports have suggested there was a Tele-Prompter problem.
It was down to the final two, Miss Philippines and Miss Colombia, who were both supportively hugging in that show of beauty queen-faux goodwill.
And then Harvey said it. “Miss……… Colombia!”
From that point on, it was probably the slowest two-and-a-half-minutes in the history of beauty pageants.
At :08, Miss Colombia Ariadna Gutierrez gets a hug. She’s given her country’s flag to wave at :17.
At :19 she gets sashed. Sashed! Then come the flowers. And why wait for the big get-up? The tiara is on her head at :44.
Pardon me for looking at this like the Zapruder film. I’m not searching for a second gunman or a conspiracy. Time is significant because usually, as in football, if you snap the ball before there’s a call for a video challenge, the play goes through. And the crowning of the tiara is as close to starting a reign as you are going to get.
Now, I am on the west coast, and when some dutiful pageant-watching friends on the east coast saw all this live, they alerted your scribe as to this real life snafu taking place live.
It’s not Miss Colombia, it’s Miss Philippines, they tell me, and I, as an American Filipino, should be happy, they say. But…..
I was too busy eating my vegan tacos to care about such trifles until the west coast feed.
Believe me, I was fully expecting to see more of an “oops” moment, where the oops is immediately acknowledged, and, well, no harm, no foul.
But as I watched, the replay, It was clear Miss Colombia was the new “Carrie.”
She was flying kisses, waving, flashing a “V” for victory sign at :1:27 into her “reign.”
I kept waiting for Harvey to jump in, but it wouldn’t happen for another 40 seconds, when the emcee comes out to say, “OK folks…uh….. there’s… have to apologize.”
There are a full 12 seconds of gasping and shrieking in dozens of languages.
And then comes the bucket of blood in the form of a correction that takes two-minutes-and-thirty seconds after the boo-boo: “The first runner up is Colombia.”
There are nearly 20 seconds of international “WTF-ness,” not just in the Vegas auditorium, but around the world. People comprehending “First Runner-up.”
When I saw it in Northern California, the local FOX station didn’t even give Miss Philippines her moment in the sun. It cut it off right at 10 pm.
OK, I know, we must put this all in perspective. But there is a fairy tale in these kinds of entertainments. And when all that and the fakeness of beauty get obliterated by something so real and human as a major screw-up, the show becomes a worthy Greek tragedy.
These aren’t just mannequins on heels, after all.
Unlike in “Carrie,” Miss Colombia got no blood spilled on her, but she must have been horrified. Later in a video, she was seen pushing back tears as only a jilted queen can do. “Everything happens for reason, so I’m happy,” she says on a tape the pageant provided to NBC News.
Miss Philippines seemed to need Miss USA to explain to her what was happening. In the same tape, Wurtzbach called it “a very non-traditional problem.”
And poor Steve Harvey, whom I love as a stand-up comedian and host, had to feel bad. He took full responsibility for the boo-boo in the You Tube clip.
But when he went to social media, it got worse, as he first misspelled Philippines “Philippians,” and Colombia “Columbia.”
I know an honest mistake.
This wouldn’t happen if we made the pageant required viewing as a geography and spelling lesson.
Harvey’s corrected tweet added, “I feel terrible.”
If there’s one silver lining, it may be this. You’ll recall last year’s brouhaha between Donald Trump and NBC, when Trump made comments about undocumented immigrants (not the phrase he uses). Trump bought out NBC for the rights to the show, held the stock for a bit, then sold it off to WME/IMG, which put it on Fox.
That may have been your cover to watch the proceedings to imagine a world without Trump. But it may also turn out to be a campaign ploy for Trump.
Could you conceive of the show ending the way it did had Trump been involved?
Of course not.
Sure enough, there was The Donald tweeting: “This would never have happened!”
And then, he was on the NBC-TODAY show, extending his time, when he talked of all things world politics, to talk about what he really knows.
Beauty pageants.
And then he made the suggestion that the new owners “do a co-winner.”
Co-winner? What? And he thinks the tiny Philippines would allow itself to be robbed to justify human error? That wouldn’t be fair. Would Trump accept a co-winner role in New Hampshire or Iowa if he won outright but had it stolen from him? I think not.
I wonder if Al Gore was watching and had nightmares of hanging chads.
But that’s it. Trump is a divider in all things. But he sees the virtue of unity only in beauty pageants. In stuff that really matters he’s bad at. Building walls and just saying no to innocent refugees. But when it comes to solving problems of complete irrelevance, he’s defined his genius.
Trump should stop running for president, and just take over as the country’s Beauty Pageant Czar –before another beauty queen is falsely tiara-ed.
He can make Miss Universe great again!
Just leave Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach alone. The Filipinos don’t deserve to be jacked around because of Harvey’s blunder. Wurtzbach is s the future of universal global beauty, the Filipino blend, where we all have an interest in one another. Wurtzbach is the rightful queen, the one and only Miss Universe. But sharing the crown? To cover up the pageant’s blunder?
If the Filipinos would defend the Spratlys, you know they will defend their right to Miss Universe.
Emil Guillermo is an award-winning journalist and commentator. Contact: www.amok.com, www.twitter.com/emilamok , www.fb.com/emilguillermomedia
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