happy holidays

This coming week I'll be in a place that is basically disconnected from the internet, and indeed from much of reality. (Three words: Florida, parents, retirement. ) I'll be back in 2007.

stephen colbert asks, "how dare she?

In yesterday's Colbert Report Stephen asked Tara Conner:

"How dare you betray the pageant system by behaving like a sex object?"

(from THE WORD segment, entitled TIT FOR TAT)

Note: To see a clip of this commentary go the the Colbert Report home page by clicking on the image above.

Both John Stewart and Stephen Colbert had some good commentary on this story yesterday. It reached a level of absurdity that demanded their attention.

However, it was a bit like shooting fish in a barrel for Stewart and Colbert since the story involves Donald Trump. The second Trump came into the story the audiences began to laugh -- before the joke was even finished. They automatically know that he's the punch line.

Is there a more perfect representation of the comic grotesque?

I am such a tool.

The most hilarious press conference ever.

And by hilarious I mean uncomfortable and pathetic.

Tara Conner was not dethroned. It would probably be better for her career. She could jump from opening Target stores to making the talk show rounds. She could take control of her career. (Her first order of business: meet with John Waters.)

More importantly, she would be out from under the control of Donald Trump and the Miss Universe Organization who clearly can't deal with the fact that even when she's sober she's a loose cannon likely to say things that are off-script:

Her stilted, extemporaneous comments spurred the accompanying woman on stage with her from the Miss Universe organization to abruptly yank the mic away from Conner, and speak for her.

Naturally Trump will "give" her another chance. This way he still has control over the story:

"She left a small town in Kentucky and she was telling me that she got caught up in the whirlwind of New York. It's a story that has happened many times before to many women and many men who came to the Big Apple. They wanted their slice of the Big Apple and they found out it wasn't so easy. Especially when I'm in control of their lives.

Okay. Maybe he didn't say that last part.

What really slays me about all of this is the completely lunatic levels of hypocrisy that just keep collapsing in on each other.

Let me explain. Miss USA Pageant is this slutty girl who moved into the neighborhood because she has this really rich but very creepy step-dad. Miss America Pageant wants everyone to know that they are totally not related to each other. They didn't even go to the same school or anything. In fact Miss USA never went to school.

If you just go to the home pages of the two organizations you can see the differrences immediately. The Miss Universe home page mainly features soft porn photo images of the winners (Miss Universe, USA, Teen USA). Until today the home page had an image of all three women, now it just has Miss Universe as the image for their erotic Christmas Card. Which says something about the visitors to their site.

Indeed, it is often hard to tell the difference between this site and an erotica site.

Many of the "fashion" photos show the women with that sexually ecstatic look (slighted parted lips, slightly closed eyes). Here is one juicy image of Tara Conner in a savage pose, in lingerie, crawling towards the camera:

That's wholesome.

First of all Miss America is an .org and not a .com. Secondly, Miss America's home page is butt ugly. It is filled with blinking advertising and information about ticket sales. My first response was to cry "my eyes, my eyes!" and hit the "back" button to be returned to the peaceful icon Zulyka Rivera, who is without question exquisitely beautiful. As an experiment, test your heart rate as you switch from one page to the other. I swear to god that Zulyka Rivera could become part of the treatment regime for heart disease.

Anyway, as most people know. Miss America gives more scholarship money to women than any other organization in the United States. What this says about the United States is another matter. The Miss Amiercan site demonstrates that it works hard to establish itself as "relevant." It stresses education and public service. Even the swim suit portion includes the idea of "fitness."

The Miss America organization makes it very clear that their focus is about raising funds for scholarships. There are lots of places for visitors to the site to give donations. Places where you can see the lists of scholarship winners. etc. Their slogan is "some people call her a beauty queen, we call her a scholar."

The fact that this is all organized around beauty pageants -- where the basic is so culturally bizarre that when you think too much about it your head might explode. (Why don't we give the most amount of scholarship money to girls and women who are, you know, smart?)

There is nothing particularly contradictory about the Miss Universe/Miss USA corporation. The women are nothing but sex objects and there is little attempt to pretend they are anything else. The Miss U pageants are like Donald Trump: crass.

Their focus is on tits and ass and making money. Making money for the Donald that is. So you can bet that the reason Donald Trump gave Kara Conner a "second chance" is because it was a good business decision. He can still make money off of her even with her tarnished crown. In fact, perhaps even moreso.

Miss Universe/USA is about selling. The women can be used to sell things like shopping at Target. But mainly they sell themselves, i.e., mainly they sell sex. So why shouldn't the women dance on the tables? And take the tips for their dances? Why? Because those tips are supposed to be going to Donald Trump not to them. Trump is the ultimate pimp: he's the beauty pageant pimp. Trump controls the images of his products, i.e., when and where they are allowed to be sex objects: when he is making money off of them.)

Although they are more like a harem than a whore house -- since apparently they are only for his private use. They are not allowed to have men in their rooms. (For chrissakes what is Trump running -- a sorority house??) And given the ban on men in their rooms -- (oh, how we laughed!) the all-time kicker to this story is the alleged kiss between the two Miss USAs. Now that is rich.

Sure -- she can be Donald Trump's "comeback kid." At least for a while. I just hope Tara doesn't get rehabilitated too much. One doesn't want her to stop running off at the mouth until they have to take the microphone away from her. And the more that she's a pain in the ass for Trump the more I like her.

And it will make a great movie. In the hands of the right director . . .

attention john waters: your next film is calling

Could they scream any louder for John Waters?
(Unless it was for Russ Meyers?)

Its the story of an innocent girl from Kentucky
a small twn beauty queen

trying to make it in the big city.

Everyone seems so nice.
Especially Mister Trump.

He's going to make her a star.
He's very classy.
He likes to own things that are big.

He has a building where he keeps his collection of beauty queens.
She gets to live in one of the fancy apartments.


She shares it with another really nice girl who has just arrived in the big city.

They become the best of friends.

They have loads of fun living together.

Everyone in the city is really nice to them.

They never have to pay for food
or coke.

There's this one boy, Ryan, he's kind of dumb but whenever Mister Trump gets mad he always takes him into a room for a few minutes and when they come out Mr. T. is happy. So he's useful for the girls, like a handy tool.

He takes them out on the town.

But the girls aren't supposed to be going out at night. In fact, Mister Trump is the only one with keys to their apartment. He only lets them leave once a day and they have to be accompanied by his ninja spies who make sure that they behave in a wholesome manner at all times. They must uphold Mr. Trump's image as a classy guy.

But soon the girls start breaking out every night. They get reckless and start having parties in their cell - - er, apartment.

Until one night they are caught.

When Mister Trump finds out he's enraged ...
even Ryan can't calm him down

and he throws them out on the street.

to be continued . . . .

(I put this up in a hurry today so the image credits are still to come
but the women in prison pics are from Prison-a-G0-Go)