Some conservatives are reacting with concern and indignation to a statement made this week by the new Miss America, 23 year-old Carla Mund. During the pageant’s onstage Q&A session, Ms. Mund said that President Donald Trump was wrong to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, an agreement ostensibly aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions that are believed to contribute to global warming ̶ or climate change, or whatever they’re calling it this month.
To put this in its proper perspective: Informed Americans have never expected reigning Miss Americas to be geniuses, nor even particularly well-informed. Then, there’s the fact that political opinions held by beauty pageant winners have little impact on public policy. Finally, for better or worse, beauty pageant winners do have the same right as anyone else to hold fallacious opinions.
That said, the opinions held by participants in the Miss America pageant do to some degree reflect our cultural landscape ̶ but not for the reasons one might think.
The Walt Disney Company owns ABC Television, which broadcasts the Miss America Pageant. As we know, ABC is one of the chief purveyors of subversive and multicultural swill, both in its news and entertainment divisions, and Disney has been thoroughly infiltrated by like-minded individuals and interests.
Disney and ABC know that political opinions held by contestants of the Miss America Pageant reflect our culture, if only a little ̶ and this is why the companies have been using the pageant to advance the political agenda to which they subscribe, either through showcasing contestants who share their views, or through demonizing those who do not. It is probable that this is also calculated to create a culture within the pageant wherein conservative contestants are encouraged to keep their mouths shut, and conservative would-be contestants might be inclined not to participate at all.
Similarly, the reason the Miss America Pageant has increasingly featured judges who are either outright freaks or at least predisposed to ask highly controversial questions of the contestants reflects ABC’s dedication to advancing a far-left agenda. The gratuitously baiting questions on the part of its judges in recent years have been designed to position the contestants for later lionization or excoriation, depending upon their answers.
One may recall the uproar following the 2009 Miss America Pageant when Miss California’s Carrie Prejean responded to judge Perez Hilton’s question concerning gay “marriage” by saying that she believed marriage was between one man and one woman. Heaven forefend. Hilton, an obscure homosexual blogger with no claim to fame whatsoever, was nevertheless tapped as a judge because ABC and Disney are very big on advancing all things perverse, including the homosexual agenda.
One of the more frustrating aspects of covering the antics of the Obama administration, as well as those of far-left Democratic and progressive Republican lawmakers for the last eight years, was the proclivity on the part of conservative journalists and commentators for labeling the actions of these politicos as “out of touch” or politically inept.
This is largely what is occurring as these conservative journalists and commentators opine on issues such as this week’s Miss America Pageant and the failure of networks like ABC, ESPN and other Disney holdings to respond in prudent fashion to the public’s disdain for political activism in their entertainment. Many claim that ESPN, for example, has handled coverage of NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s race-related activism and other race-related issues quite abysmally; further, that this is reflected in the network’s declining viewership.
Like many other press and entertainment interests, however, the deportment of Disney, ABC, ESPN and the Miss America Pageant is not due to these organizations being out of touch or inept vis-Ã -vis politics or public relations; rather, it is due to the belief on the part of their principals that advancing a far-left political agenda supersedes the generation of revenue. Like the Obama administration, which was resigned to being called out of touch and inept as long as its political objectives were being realized, these media interests have the same resignation and the same modus operandi.
As far as their methods go, these business interests believe that they are being calculating and clever, but I see them as being furtive ̶ like the child who knows damn well that you’re likely to spy him out of the corner of your eye as he not-so-stealthily raids the cookie jar, but takes the risk anyway in the hope that you won’t see him, or won’t call him out on it.
It should be no surprise that media interests known for advancing far-left dogma would do so in more insidious fashion through institutions that are considered traditionally conservative (such as beauty pageants and sports networks). It should also be no surprise that, as they did in the case of other influential institutions like education and even the Christian church, leftists insinuated themselves into those venues precisely because they were viewed as more conservative.
Subversives subvert, and the reasoning of these leftists holds that if they can surreptitiously whittle down conservatives’ moral conviction through dissident and morally ambivalent entertainment, it’s a pretty safe bet this will be reflected the next time the unsuspecting victims find themselves in the voting booth.
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