The 2012 Pageant of Politics

Miss Congeniality 1975

Now Combined Miss Coon Rapids & Miss Anoka Pageant

As a sneak preview of the 2011 Iowa Straw Poll and the Presidential election that follows in the fall of 2012, I propose we consult with an elite group of Beauty Pageant Contestants. Broadcast the other night on the venerable NBC network, Donald Trump staged one of his most celebrated annual events: The Miss USA Pageant. Now before we go further, this post began as a discussion on Facebook and let me declare that I am favorably biased because for many years I directed the official pageant documentary for the Miss USA and Miss Universe shows. This post is the first of a series exploring the candidates for the 2012 Presidential Election.

As part of the judging this year, each beautiful contestant was asked whether she believed that evolution should be taught in school. Take a look at the responses.

• Alabama: No Montana: Yes
• Alaska: Yes Nebraska: Yes
• Arizona: No Nevada: Yes
• Arkansas: Yes New Hampshire: Yes
• California: Yes (She won!!) New Jersey: Yes
• Colorado: Yes New Mexico: Yes
• Connecticut: Yes New York: Yes
• Delaware: Yes North Carolina: Yes
• Florida: Yes North Dakota: Yes
• Georgia: Yes Ohio: Yes
• Hawaii: Yes Oklahoma: Yes
• Idaho: Yes Oregon: Yes
• Illinois: Yes Pennsylvania: Yes
• Indiana: No Rhode Island: Yes
• Iowa: Yes South Carolina: Yes
• Kansas: Yes South Dakota: Yes
• Kentucky: No Tennessee: Yes (Runner up!)
• Louisiana: Yes Texas: Yes
• Maine: Yes Utah: Yes
• Maryland: Yes Vermont: Yes
• Massachusetts: Yes Virginia: Yes
• Michigan: Yes Washington: Yes
• Minnesota: Yes West Virginia: Yes
• Mississippi: Yes Wisconsin: Yes
• Missouri: Yes Wyoming: Yes
• District of Columbia: Yes **

**Notice the Pageant Producers allow unbiased representation by the District of Columbia, unlike our unenlightened "separate but equal" congress. Too many black voters in DC? The Miss USA Pageant is more democratic than our government.

Also Note: Some contestants answered equivocally or no clear answer. For this study's assessments and calculations we assume no answer is a "No" response.

Now the Political Science. These contestants are our sample of responses or our data. All participants are below thirty years old. They are all women. They are certainly all beautiful. They are pretty intelligent. They are all patriotic women who want to do the right thing simply because they are in the Miss USA contest. So our data is skewed toward this group. Even though they were not asked the question, it is a good conjecture they are very likely to vote in the primaries and the final election next year.

These women have given us a data mine that may provide a high value prediction of the final outcome. Forget about the "Soccer Moms" of the past thirty years. We have here a much more accurate predictor. These are the young women of the modern American world. They work. They vote. They are our future.

Take note that only four of the fifty-one Misses were against teaching evolution in schools. The four that were opposed were in Alabama, Arizona, Indiana and Kentucky. All those four states are clearly republican territory and would surely vote in large numbers for Michele Bachmann.

Looking at one of the nation's most celebrated Presidential contenders, a former pageant contestant has now answered the same question as the Miss USA contestants. US Representative Michele Marie Bachmann, a top ten finalist in the now Combined Miss Coon Rapids & Miss Anoka Pageant, took the crown for Miss Congeniality. Like most Pageant contestants Michele Bachmann is very pretty, very intelligent and coldly competitive. She worked on a kibbutz in Israel. She holds a Masters Degree in Tax Law. She was raised a Democrat, but she credits Gore Vidal's criticism of the founding fathers with her conversion to a more reverent republican dogma. She was the very first republican woman to ever get elected to the House from Minnesota. She has charged that global warming is a hoax. She has opposed any increases in the minimum wage. She has taken a pick-axe to Pell grants for higher education. She wants to phase out both Social Security and Medicare. She is a key leader of the Tea party yodelers in Congress. And finally she stated in 2006, "there is a controversy among scientists about whether evolution is a fact or not.... There are hundreds and hundreds of scientists, many of them holding Nobel Prizes, who believe in intelligent design." That does it with the lie. There's no Nobel winning Scientist ever who would believe any of what she said. She told the lie above as part of her official congressional biography. Enough of Bachmann's destruction of truth and reason.

There's no argument or question. Evolution is a reality in our DNA. A scientific theory is proven or disproven by the scientific method of hypothesis, experiment and analysis of the result. Scientific theory is how we launch rockets to the moon. Scientific theory is how we create astounding structures all over the world. Scientific theory is how we are able to fly in jet planes from Minnesota to Washington in a couple of hours. Scientific theory is how we cured polio and smallpox. Scientific theory is something entirely different from scribblings found in the Bible or the Koran or on a wall in a tomb in Egypt. It is simply denial of truth if we choose not to accept the scientific method. And denial is not just a river in Egypt!

Like a needy and naive pageant queen, in her youth Michele Bachmann must have been taught nonsense and fairy tales as truth. Her teachers must be to blame for her distrust of the Scientific method. Or worse, Bachmann rants her religious dogma for bigoted votes and media attention. Bachmann reminds this writer of the tribal guy in Borneo who puts out torches at night to lure the airplanes to land and bring him food and stuff. (See the Cargo Cult). Look at the pathetic Tea Party cult of tedious ranters in the republican party all over America and the vapid racism of those loud mouths. As good Americans, we try to respect them all in a way, just like we need to give regard to fools and fops everywhere and their dreamland tenets.

What would life be like if we did not have such madcap know-nothings? The people in the Weimar Republic Germany after World War I probably held the same sentiments. Look at the fascist state they got in return. That fascist state is exactly what we'll get in America if we continue to give a platform to Michele Bachmann and her like.