An Arab-American was crowned Miss USA last night, leading to the inevitable freakout. My favorite to date:
They are all attractive, but this surprising frequency of Muslims winning beauty pageants makes me suspect an odd form of affirmative action.
I’ve never judged a pageant, but I think she qualifies without any affirmative action:
I mean, good lord. She’s gorgeous. That’s affirmative action in beauty?
(Via)
Paul in KY
I’d like to affirmatively state that she has action. Lots & lots of action.
GambitRF
Debbie Shulssel calls her “Miss Hezbollah Rima Fakih.”
Wingers continue to prove that they’re absolutely 100% not at all racist.
Allison W.
…..and the terrorists win – again.
LittlePig
This new method of promoting Sharia law in the United States will be extremely difficult to counter…
And, might I add, WOW.
Alex
Everything is affirmative action. Every, every, everything. That way, they never have to admit that a non-white individual could be more talented than their white competitor.
@GambitRF: Seriously?
Admiral_Komack
The woman is beautiful.
The wingnuts are idiots.
Carry on.
djork
Jihad hit that.
Allison W.
It amazes me that there are people in this country who say minorities need to pull themselves up yet when those very same minorities succeed at anything — it’s affirmative action.
Chyron HR
My, what a stylish burqa.
freelancer
Liberals are the real racists for voting for her, because everyone knows that the Miss America contest has a well-known liberal bias.
Bubblegum Tate
She is, like all pageant contestants, too much on the skin-and-bones side of things, and yet she’s still a stunner. Yowza.
But yeah, her victory is clearly some sort of LIEbrul-Islamocommie plot.
Steve
Most Arabs in Michigan, and in the U.S. generally, are Christian rather than Muslim.
Of course, if she had happened to be Christian I’m sure the same people would have had the exact same comments to offer, right?
TR
His “surprising frequency” consists of Miss England 2006, Miss Nottingham 2005, America’s Junior Miss 2007, and now Miss USA 2010.
Wow. Four different pageant winners in six years? Including such incredibly high profile pageants as Miss Nottingham?
We’re through the looking glass here, people.
Kryptik
Wow. That’s….yowza.
Also, I’d like to ask those who think this win is some sort of Muslim conspiracy or something…you know that Sharia law thing you seem to be afraid of? Hijabs and burqas and all the like?…yeah, you do realize that the kind of Muslims you freak out about probably hate this woman too for being so scandalous looking.
We in the real world of sanity, of all stripes of religion and such, recognize that some kind of conspiracy to rig beauty pageants as a terrorist plot is all well and dumb, but we’d rather not dwell on it when we could be looking at a beautiful woman in a bikini instead.
Silver Owl
Yay, Michigan! Double triple bazillion bonuses for making Schlussel’s head spin, pop and spew toxic sewage. Our state idiot was in need of a work out. She wasn’t getting enough attention. LOL!
Kevin Phillips Bong
Hundreds of hours of staring at Muslims through a camera and I have yet to see one that looks like that. Might make it worth it.
LittlePig
@Steve: From what I read in the AP her family “celebrates both Christian and Muslim traditions”.
You know, like an American.
D.N. Nation
Ms. Schlussel and Mr. Pipes are free to enter in beauty pageants if they like.
QuaintIrene
@TR:
Exactly what I was gonna ask. What plethora of Muslim pageant winners?
JD Rhoades
Dayum.
Paul_D
Roy has already peered into the bottom of winguttia’s reaction.
Nevermind, There is no bottom deep enough.
freelancer
Quick, Somebody draw a cartoon of her, that’ll stem the tide of the RW freakout! (You see, we just need to get them to really around something stupid and meaningless, then they’ll change their mind.)
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
As a man who favors women with long, dark hair, all I have to say is “hubba hubba”.
Kryptik
@LittlePig:
But that’s silly. Everyone knows that brown people can’t be real Americans!…ok, there’s Sowell, and Malkin, and Steele, but they’re not really brown, you see, they renounced their brownness for the One True Conservatism!
kommrade reproductive vigor
I only caught Debbie Slushferbrains and Michelle Squawkin this morning. Apparently it is terrible bad and nasty that she won because OMGIslamoterror and Miss Blonde Pro-Arizona Immigration Law Oklahoma was a much better contestant and how come she’s not wearing a burqa like a good little terrist, huh?
It was kind of sad, actually.
soonergrunt
@Paul_D: You beat me to the reference, but that column of his is a treasure. I hope he keeps doing it.
It must be exhausting to run your heart and soul at ‘outrage’ level all the time. Here’s hoping it shortens all of their lives.
MattF
On a slightly more serious note, I remember when Bess Meyerson won the Miss America pageant (yes, I’m that old). My parents were quite proud about it.
Napoleon
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
Seconded, and I should add I love dark eyes and at least some skin tone (I grew up with many Sicilian girls, can you tell).
Ash Can
@freelancer: Actually, the Miss USA and Miss America pageants are two different things. I’m betting that order will be restored by the Miss America judges and the next Miss America will be a glow-in-the-dark white-skinned blonde from the South who hates feminists and brown people, especially since IIRC one of those judges will be Rush Limbaugh.
cmorenc
A long-ago friend from high school had a curious phrase for referring to beautiful, hot-bodied women like this:
“built like a brick shithouse”.
I never did figure out why he considered this a highly complimentary statement about a hot-looking woman, other than that brick was considered the sine qua non of quality building materials according to prevailing tastes at the time within my smallish southern hometown. Of course, he had the sense to use this phrase only among the boys, and not knowingly within earshot of women (especially the woman who was being described as “built like a brick shithouse). But weirdly, he did not intend this term to have any derogatory meaning whatever, with the caveat that this was in the early 60s, back at least several years before the dawn of women’s lib, when sexist thinking about women was still immensely more interwoven into the fabric of society.
Cacti
Methinks some white folks are getting nervous at the idea that Anglo-Saxon may be getting slowly replaced as the default standard for physical beauty.
Jay C
If you can stomach the general vileness, see Debbie Schlussel’s blog for an “analysis” (emphasis on the “anal”) of the real reason behind Rima Fakih’s success:
yep, it’s all a terrorist plot!
And her exposure of terror-loving media bias is priceless:
Right, Debbie: ‘cuz that’s what terrorists DO: piss them off, and they’ll go and put fluff-pieces in the hometown paper!
jibeaux
Oh, for pity’s sake, any sort of even remotely pious Muslim would not wear a bikini onto a stage. As an Arab character said in an underappreciated little book called Night of the Avenging Blowfish about the Episcopalian church: “You just join.”
You will be able to identify the coming of teh affirmative action when a young lady with no makeup and a hijab wins one of those things.
c u n d gulag
@D.N. Nation:
Schlussel’s just jealous. That hag would never be invited. And if she were, there’s no opposite to “Miss Congeniality.” I don’t they have a “Miss Evil, Nasty Vicious Shrew” award. If they did, she’d certainly win that one.
As a man, I must say, WOW!!! If she asks me, I’m converting. Whoa Nellie!!!
ArchPundit
Calling Ralph Fiennes
*
* [Defending Schindler] He likes women. He likes good-looking women. He sees a beautiful woman – he doesn’t think. He has so many women. They love him, yeah, they love him. I mean, he’s married, yeah, but … all right, she was Jewish, he shouldn’t have done it, but you didn’t see this girl. I saw this girl. This girl was, wuff, very good-looking. They cast a spell on you, you know, the Jews. When you work closely with them like I do, you see this. They have this power, it’s like a virus. Some of my men are infected with this virus. They should be pitied, not punished. They should receive treatment, because this is as real as typhus. I see this all the time. It’s a matter of money, hm?
Bill E Pilgrim
It’s clear what they’re doing. They mean to win Wimbledon.
KevinNYC
So Daniel Pipes is either surprisingly well-informed about international beauty pageants, down to the level of what Wikipedia tells me is “regional qualifier for the election of Miss France” or irrationally anti-Muslim.
The first thing I thought when I heard the news, was “Wow, this was like four other events over the past five years including the Mlle Picardie pageant and Miss Nottingham 2005”
If you didn’t follow the link to Daniel Pipes, you also missed this bit of racism:
freelancer
@Ash Can:
Ha! It’s like I take pride in being ignorant. (In this case, yes.)
kommrade reproductive vigor
@cmorenc: I don’t know where the term came from, I know it’s been around forever, and without it we would not have this little ditty: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrBx6mAWYPU
Edit: I must add, also2, that watching the fReichtards denounce La Donald as some sort of hippy-dippy P.C. ponce is just icing on the cake. I wonder if they were holding back after the 2010 Miss America pageant and were relieved when they found what they see as a more appropriate target.
WereBear
She’s lovely. The wingnut head explosions are simply a bonus.
pixelpusher
No wonder they cover them up.
ArchPundit
===No surprise here. Affirmative action was first applied in beauty contests for black women to win in the 1980s, then it was the turn of Latin, brown skinned women, and now it’s Muslims. That’s why most people ignore these rigged “events.” They are money losers and require controversy.
Holy shit. That’s like the shit that I get everyday in my white supremacist e=mail listservs.
Booger
Hey, Pipes has to dish out the neocon zionist crazy 24-7, right? Besides, it’s obvious the winner has absolutely no reason to even be in a beauty contest, much less WIN it.
Oh, wait…we’re talking about HER??? Hell, I’d go hiking on the Appalachian Trail with her in a heartbeat.
Allan
Her first acts upon being crowned as Miss USA were to order her fellow contestants stoned for their revealing garb, then she issued a fatwa calling for jihad against Miss America.
According to Debbie Schlussel.
I always hope someday someone commits Debbie to an insane asylum and throws away the Schlüssel.
Brian J
I couldn’t care less about who wins these things–after those bastards mocked my swimsuit competition walk, I quit–but isn’t the reason this is news because it’s relatively uncommon for an Arab woman to win? I could be wrong, because like I said, I don’t pay attention to these things, but where’s the rush of Muslim contest winners?
Geeno
@cmorenc: The expression roughly means “very, very built”, because no one would build a brick out house. You have to move them around occasionally, and making one out of brick would be overkill.
KevinNYC
I mean the Mlle Picardie pageant is always on my social calendar. It’s about as glamorous and exciting a pageant could be that represents the major communties of Amiens, Compiègne, Creil, Laon and Soissons and boasts all the attractions you would expect from an area that about-france.com, calls
Picardie! It’s the leading French region for the production of sugar beet. Picardie, the Scranton of France!
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
She’s Miss Michigan btw. I mean, come on, if it weren’t for the Arab-American community in Michigan, they’d just have some pasty white girl. The wingnuts who live in Michigan, at least, should be grateful.
/pseudosnark
licensed to kill time
I saw a brief clip on tv of the moment they announced the winner. They had the last two contestants standing there, one extremely blonde ‘classic all American looks’ and the other this stunning brunette. I remember thinking ‘ ah, they never give it to the brunettes’ and then being surprised that she won.
When I heard she was from Lebanon originally, I thought ‘here come the fatwas and threats’ because she’s not wearing one of those burkinis and just on general principles.
My two thoughts. Meh.
Paul in KY
@cmorenc: I think one of the advantages to a ‘brick shithouse’ is that it is very hard to remove from its foundation.
A staple prank back in the days of ‘everyone had outhouses’ was to take it off the hole so that in the night someone racing to it would fall in the hole. Hilarious!
Makes you wonder why old people are so cranky.
Objective Scrutator
Wow. That sounds very similar to what I’d write if I was trolling.
ellaesther
As a Mideast geek and progressive Democrat I cannot decide if I should celebrate integration — Whee! Arab-American wins Miss USA! — or decry misogyny: What the fuck?! Miss USA? In this day and age?
Torn. I’m torn here.
valdivia
wait, isn’t this the kind of thing neocons want from immigrants? a total and thorough embrace of pop culture, including parading half naked when one has the assets to flaunt?
I haz a confused.
YellowJournalism
What? She didn’t say enough againt gay marriage for them to consider her a legit win?
She has a gorgeous face that goes beyond the typical pageant frozen smile look. She has a perfect mixture of sweetness and hot babe to her looks. But those heels freak me out. Ouch, ouch, ouch.
YellowJournalism
@ellaesther: They’re not beauty pageants! They’re scholarship programs!
/Gracie Lou Freebush
Scuffletuffle
@cmorenc: I actually use that expression myself when observing a well built male, usually a landscaper, at the Home Depot where I work. I consider it complimentary.
Dave
I’d kneel towards her five times a day…
gwangung
She’s sweet looking, yet hot. And she can wear a bikini well enough (and manage high heels).
If this is affirmative action, then why is it a bad thing?
Violet
Sample comment from Schlussel’s blog:
Wow. You can’t make this stuff up. They parody themselves.
Jay C
@KevinNYC:
Take it as a given, Kevin: it’s option “B”.
Although, as overheated and ridiculous as this crap may seem, there’s a nontrivial segment of our country’s commentariat who would disagree quite vigorously with the “irrational” part.
Not including Debbie Schlussel, though: she is just plain batshit insane. With a blog.
Joshua Norton
And now for something completely different…
The same thing done under Sharia law.
Undoubtedly be one of the great comedic advances of our time.
Dan
Well if that’s what their virgins look like, I might blow myself up for 73 of those. Or 2. Or 1.
Randy P
@cmorenc: That was a common phrase of my youth (central new york, early to mid 70s). I had no idea it was considered unusual.
Yes, yes, she’s very pretty and all that. But as a guy in my 50s I long ago walked away from the idea that 19-to-21 year olds represent some sort of beauty ideal. For the most part, I no longer see a woman as maturing into her true beauty until 40. I honestly don’t get the youth fetishism.
But I guess that’s just me.
@QuaintIrene: I wondered the same thing. The question I have is “out of how many total beauty pageants in those years”? Anybody have any idea just how many there are? Is our “surprising frequency” of Muslim winners 1%? Less?
4tehlulz
Li’l Debbie exists to make Stormfront look rational and consistent.
Occasional Reader
God bless America
Cacti
It’s all part of the new double-plus secret Al Qaeda plan to impose sharia on us.
First they enter gorgeous, scantily clad women in beauty pageants.
Next thing you know, they’ll be advocating for strong separation of church and state.
Allahu Akbar!
valdivia
Sorry but I really just don’t.get.this.
This is exactly the kind of integration that all these assholes say they want from the muslim community and now that we have it in the person of a Miss USA who will represent this country in Miss Universe they are upset? head:desk.
Oh and btw, although this is objectifying of a fellow sister: she is a looker. Good for her
SpotWeld
I wonder if U of M is going to start referencing her in thier promotional materials.
Woodrow L. Goode, IV
John, can we cut the P.C. nonsense? It’s very simple: Women who don’t have (a) bleached-blonde hair, (b) boob jobs, (c) fundamentalist leanings and (d) a sex tape or nude photo shoot in their past aren’t “Real Americans (TM)“.
This sounds like a job for Nate SIlver, if someone could get him to stop laughing long enough.
patrick II
Vanessa Williams — the first black Miss America — was one of the hottest ladies ever to win that title. A little too hot as it turned out.
shortstop
Of course you all think she’s “beautiful.” You’re race traitors. I suppose you don’t see any problem with intermarrying with them, either, do you? Huh? Huh?
Napoleon
@licensed to kill time:
Funny, the year Vanessa Williams won (and was the first black woman to win) a girl who was a grade ahead of me in HS ended up being one of the last 5 up on stage and 2 or the other 4 were black, and I could not help but think that is what would happen (I was rooting against the woman I knew because a few years earlier she was Miss Alabama in the Miss USA contest and sported a fake southern accent).
Ended up she was next eliminated (fouth runner up
and it came down to the two black women.
(as an side the woman I knew, similar to the current winner, had a very strong ethnic look to her since she is Greek).
shortstop
Exactly. As if you could “affirmative action” being able to walk in those. I’m telling you there is no slackers’ substitute for the hard work of learning to stay upright on those things.
flukebucket
I just bowed 5 times towards Mecca.
"Fair and Balanced" Dave
Kinda like stupid women winning the Miss Wasilla pagaent?
jake the snake
@cmorenc
That phrase goes back long way. At least back to WWII military slang. I can remember my father saying “brick privvy” Or the old Commodores tune “Brick***house”
.
Isaac Asimov once had a character describe a woman as being “being built like a force-field latrine”.
Pigs & Spiders
Don’t blow yer wad yet boys, here comes another wave of right wing freak-out! The Stealth Muslim Jihadist4Eva’s Kenyan Aunt gets to stay here in White America!!
MikeJ
Didn’t I just read today that the woman who beat Palin in the Miss Alaska contest is running for the House in GA?
Ash Can
@freelancer: Hey, I made the same mistake myself at first. When I saw this story on DKos, my first thought was, “Wait a minute — Limblow voted for a Muslim girl?” And I waded into the comments section to find out what was being said in this regard, and saw someone’s comment that the two pageants were different events. So you’re not the only blissfully ignorant one here. :)
But I am interested to see how the Miss America pageant turns out now. I mean, I’m sure the winner will be Miss South Carolina and the news media will make a big fuss over her as being a fine specimen of all-American girlhood, nudge nudge, but I’m wondering how the entertainment media (arguably an even more powerful star-making engine) will spin it.
some other guy
@Kryptik:
Indeed. If right-wingers were serious about fighting extreme fundamentalism they’d celebrate and help popularize such stunning symbols of moderation and conformity. Instead, since they’re really just bigots using the “War on Terror” as an excuse to hate, they’re using her as yet another reason to bitch about non-white people conspiring with liberal race traitors to steal from more deserving white people.
gwangung
Yup.
That’s how affirmative action is supposed to work, y’know. We’re really lowering standards to have Vanessa Williams as Miss America….
Napoleon
@Napoleon:
Re my post above, God the internet is a wonderful place, my high school classmate clapping for Vanessa Williams.
licensed to kill time
@Napoleon:
Interesting. I haven’t watched any Miss America thingies since I was a kid, so my only exposure tends to be the brief news clip. It used to be a pretty big deal when I was a kid, but mostly because we all rooted for our particular state to win (Go New Mexico!) and frankly, they all were pretty interchangeable back then (60’s). Also, there wasn’t a whole lot on tv back then, so it was a kind of ‘shared experience, everybody’s watching’ vibe.
Gosh, I say ‘back then’ a lot.
trollhattan
@jake the snake:
It’s been around sufficiently long that it’s been inverted to reference defective real estate, i.e., It’s a shit, brick house.
Anyhoo, yes, yes she is. Donald, you’ve done it again.
Frat. Order of Masons
Brick shithouse= ‘stacked’
MikeJ
Free porn of any kind you want is available on the internet anytime you want it.
Somehow swimsuit contests don’t have the same appeal that they did when I was 12 and that was as much skin as you could see easily.
Napoleon
Too funny, when I plug that girl who was in the Mrs. America contest with Vanessa Williams married name into Google it comes back that she contributes very heavily to right wing politicians and is quoted in recent stories a tea party protester.
I am so glad I was cheering for her to loose to Vanessa.
Mnemosyne
Of course it is, because everyone knows that only
Aryanblonde, blue-eyed women are beautiful. So, by definition, Susan Estrich is much more beautiful than Ms. Fakih and should have been declared the winner by default.As an aside, if anyone is wondering what the talent portion of the Miss USA pageant consists of, it’s walking in high heels while wearing a bikini. None of this “you need to know how to sing/play an instrument/pack a suitcase” nonsense they put the Miss America contestants through. If Donald Trump thinks you’re hot, you win.
Thoroughly Pizzled
The runner-up, Miss Oklahoma, said she supported the Arizona immigration law, but not racial profiling.
ArchPundit
==Fakih was born into a powerful Shiite family in a village in southern Lebanon that was heavily bombed during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. But she and her sister said the family celebrates both Muslim and Christian faiths and prefer to be referred to as Lebanese, Arabs or Arab-Americans.
==She moved to the United States with her family in 1993 and attended a Catholic school in New York. Her family moved to Michigan in 2003.
Yep, definitely a Jihadist.
BTW, the question of how this will play in Peoria is particularly funny given the significant Lebanese population in Peoria. Saint Louis has a Mayor who is of Lebanese descent and an Eastern Rites Catholic Church with a significant Lebanese population.
Round ’em up!
Ash Can
@flukebucket: Is that what you kids are calling it nowadays?
Raaaaaaaaaaahm
The most compelling case for exporting our degenerate culture to the rest of the world: Persian girls are mind-warpingly hot.
Mnemosyne
@Napoleon:
Somehow, I picture your old classmate watching “Ugly Betty” with a six-pack of beer and ranting about how that should have been her co-starring on the show, goddamnit!
ellaesther
@YellowJournalism: Ah ha! Then back to celebrating!
cmorenc
@Randy P
Actually, I didn’t consider it unusual at the time (early to mid 60s), when its use was far more commonplace than it is now. My old high school friend wasn’t the only guy who sometimes used it, but he was easily the most frequent user of that term within my circles.
Rather, it’s with my own vastly different perspective 50 years later (and the oceanic change in society and women’s place in it) that this phrase “brick shithouse” sounds so odd and curious. It’s fairly rare that I’ll hear anyone use that phrase nowdays to refer to beautiful hot-bodied women.
Yeah, I get that the term reflects the beyond-any-question high build quality of a beautiful woman, but even back 50 years ago, guys were aware that the woman in question might not take the image in a favorably complimentary spirit.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Joshua Norton:
That wording looks strangely familiar.
Lee
You can all thank me later…
NSFW…..NSFW…..NSFW…..NSFW…..NSFW…..NSFW…..
Miss USA on a stripper pole
NSFW…..NSFW…..NSFW…..NSFW…..NSFW…..NSFW…..
To quote Tony Stark “I want one”
aimai
@Bill E Pilgrim:
What’s next: Blanc Mange in a burka?
aimai
pixelpusher
@KevinNYC: Compiègne is a lovely town with a 2nd Empire palace and one of the most beautiful forests of France. Highly recommended.
PurpleGirl
Yeah, she’s a looker all right.
Other famous Lebanese-Americans (without research): Tony Shaloub of Monk fame; Marlo Thomas and her father, Danny Thomas.
Lebanon’s capital — Beirut — was known as the Paris of the Middle East before we let Israel, Syria and others use it for target practice. It was a very Western-leaning country with gracious people, many of whom were Catholic, Eastern Rite Christians or of other minor Christian sects.
mr. whipple
Wow, she is gorgeous.
aimai
@cmorenc:
Yeah The Commodores “She’s a Brick…House” is so out of style it can be used as a RING TONE.
Brachiator
@ArchPundit:
It’s funny. Comedian Danny Thomas (born Amos Alphonsus Muzyad Yakhoob) was of Lebanese descent, and born in Deerfield, Michigan.
It is sad and ridiculous that wingnuts are descending into this baleful, stupidly toxic nativism.
And yes, this is one gorgeous woman. Not robotically pretty, but wowza hot.
RedKitten
This whole thing just scares the bejeezus out of the wingers. Miss USA is supposed to be a representation of American female pulchritude, am I right? So…if a Muslim woman wins, that means that a Muslim is representative of American beauty. And that just freaks the living hell out of people, because they’re convinced that the Muslims, the gheys, the atheists and the Mexicans are “taking over” and changing the face of the country. The more we see non-white, non-Christian people in positions of power or prominence, especially if their role is to represent America in some fashion, the more the wingers will spazz out.
Cheryl from Maryland
@ArchPundit: Let me know if he answers.
catclub
@licensed to kill time:
I prefer ‘consarn it’ and ‘young whippersnapper’.
“Not much meat on her, but what’s there is cherce”.
Spencer Tracy
FlipYrWhig
@cmorenc: IMHO “built like a brick shithouse” basically means “built to last.” (A wooden shithouse would be rickety.) She’s voluptuous and, um, sturdy. But, like you, I always thought the whole “shit” association was peculiar.
maus
Love it. WASP wins = meritocracy. non-WASP “= affirmative action”. I mean, they don’t have any merits, don’t be silly.
B. B. Keeng
‘stacked’ = ‘built up from the ground’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRqTmeGPiBI
Gravenstone
Yah, my first thought on learning that she’d won was along the lines of, “which multi-generationally inbred piece of shit is going to whine about them damned Ay-rabs winning an All American Beauty Contest”? Gotta admit, Debbie Schlussel did not make my top 10 list.
Lurking Canadian
With apologies to the radicals of the 1960s, it strikes me that wearing a bikini for sharia is a bit like screwing for virginity.
Martin
@RedKitten: Yeah, this.
It’s not that a non-white won, rather it means that ‘white’ is no longer equated with what is right, proper, beautiful, righteous etc. Whitey is gonna have to work for it now, and, well, that’s never happened in this country, not in 4 centuries.
AmericanWASP exceptionalism is dead.Paul
My friend and I watched the final minutes of the pageant. My eyes were on her throughout the “runner up” process.
Stunning, she’s simply stunning. The racist wingnuts can go to hell.
Napoleon
@Mnemosyne:
Funny, every time I see Vanessa on TV I think of how it must drive her nuts. I imagine that ever since Vanessa was found out to have posed for those lesbianish photos that came out just the mention of her name must send her into convulsions.
And it couldn’t happen to a better person. After the whole thing of her faking a southern accent I decided she was as phony as they come. We both went to law school at the same time but to different schools (she was at U of Cincy) and I had friends in her class. When she was trying for the Miss USA crown she would tell people she wanted to do poverty or world peace law or some BS like that. 2 seconds after Vanessa cleaned her clock she switched to a corporate law curriculum, then after graduating became a TV reporter in Cincy.
Pure fluff and phoniness, who comes from a wealthy family (which may be is where she gets the ability to have given thousands to Bush/Cheney per the internet). The perfect tea partier.
Barry
@LittlePig: Oh h*ck, if *that’s* sharia law, then I’m signing up to be a dhimmi – if I can be *her* dhimmi.
FreeAtLast
@Joshua Norton:
Thanks for the Monday morning laugh – one I desperately needed.
Mike in NC
My wife visited Lebanon several years ago to see her cousin, who was then the US ambassador. She came back claiming the entire country was filled with gorgeous people.
In that case she should be expecting a campaign appearance on behalf of whoever her opponent is from a certain ex-governor who specializes in being a vindictive, spiteful, mean-spirited asshole. Also, too.
Capn America
Actually, three of the past twenty Miss World Canada and Miss Universe Canada have been Iranians, so I guess there is a trend of people of Middle Eastern descent winning beauty pageants.
Because (surprise!) many of them actually are beautiful, especially this one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazanin_Afshin-Jam
SRW1
Muslims have identified their weapon of mass destruction and have sneaked them into the US. The only thing that’s gonna help now is to make burkas mandatory!
flukebucket
@Lee:
Why can’t I get God Bless The USA by Lee Greenwood to stop going around and around in my head?
Paula
Ugh, fuck the right wing asstards who are putting me in the position of defending beauty pageants …
As for Miss USA, someone get her a burger, stat.
jeffreyw
She is in need of a sammich.
The Populist
Debbie who? Oh yes, the bitch even Howard Stern won’t talk to.
She’s such a media whore. This girl is an AMERICAN. What is wrong with these idiots?
BethanyAnne
@Capn America: Aye, I’ve seen some Persian women that are just smoking hot. Miss USA up there needs a sammich, IMO, but she’s still very pretty.
Poopyman
@Lee:
Ruh-roh. Did you catch the “Breaking News” at that link? Seems that The Donald’s people want to have a look at some more of those pics.
BethanyAnne
@jeffreyw: lol, I hadn’t even read that when I posted.
ET
UMMMMMM
Muslims have been winning a lot of beauty pageants in the US? Really?
Poopyman
@The Populist:
She’s not one of their kinds of Amurkin.
PurpleGirl
Miss USA is the feeder pageant to the Miss Universe pageant. It was started in opposition to Miss America when the title holder in 1950 refused to be photographed in a swimsuit. One of the Miss America sponsors was a swimsuit manufacturer; the company helped found Miss USA.
Should Ms. Fakih win Miss Universe, then the first runner-up becomes Miss USA. That’s the bimbo who supports the Arizona law…
licensed to kill time
@catclub:
@Paula:
Another thing I’ve noticed from back in the day is that while the general American population has gotten significantly heftier, the Miss Americas have gotten distinctly scrawnier. Now, how is that representative of America, I ask you ?!
Da Bomb
@Ash Can: Believe or not the current Miss America is black.
And Rush limbaugh was the host this year.
I guess he believes in Affirmative Action too.
Ash Can
@Da Bomb: LOL! Shows what I know about these beauty pageants!
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Yea, what you guys have said. The Debbie Downers of the world say they hate Islamofascism, illegal immigration, etc, but really, they just hate multi-culturalism. Anything that undermines white supremacy is evil.
debbie
Flipping around the dial last night, I happened to turn to this program when she was answering a question about whether birth control pills should be reimbursable like other medications. She answered that they should be. Not very Sharia of her.
FlipYrWhig
With a Muslim Miss USA, thousands of pants-minarets are under construction.
debbie
Sister Machine Gun: What Debbie Schussel really hates her for are her looks.
Bubblegum Tate
@Raaaaaaaaaaahm:
Amen to that.
Neo
Check out Miss USA Rima Fakih when she won Mojo In The Morning’s “Stripper 101″ contest in 2007.
She brings a whole new meaning to “radical Islamist”
Donald Trump seems to attract a strange set of people to the Miss USA events. I guess it’s his lot in life.
Da Bomb
@Ash Can: I just happened to watch this year with a friend. She made me suffer through it. She comes from a pageant family.Mario Lopez hosted it. And I was shocked to see Rush Limbaugh as a judge.
But Miss Virginia won. She’s a cutie as well. Here she is… http://www.shoppingblog.com/pics/caressa_cameron_crowned_miss_america.jpg
I remember when there two black women in row who won the Miss America pageant, Debbye Tuner and Majorie Vincent. There were people in mourning after that.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
The more parsimonious explanations are (1) she won on, as John says, the “merits”, (2) most judges harbor secret fantasies of stripping the burqa off a maiden and discovering a hot Arabic girl in a bikini underneath. I mean, who doesn’t?
Catsy
Uh, yeah.
A little on the thin side for my tastes, but drop-dead gorgeous. I would not kick her out of my bed for eating crackers.
And I have to say, very cunning of her to disguise her Islamofascist leanings by wearing her hijab as a bikini. I can see why the wingnut heads are imploding.
Ash Can
Balloon Juice cited by some wingnut blogger and declared Teh Sexist in 3…2…1…
bemused
The Rand Institute/National Organization for Marriage is very concerned that white people are not reproducing enough. Va Digby, a leaked internal memo with a mission to “maintain at least a replacement-level birth rate, so that the devastation of a European-style “demographic winter” is avoided.
When a group of people are so afraid of others, so afraid of not being #1 in everything, they really have nothing.
gwangung
Good lord. Unfair.
Talented, doing way more social good than a townful of wingnuts and drop dead gorgeous.
brendancalling
@GambitRF:
debbie schlussel has a face like a blow-up sex doll, and should shut the fuck up.
robertdsc
She’s really pretty. Like her hair, too.
I once had a guy pitch me an idea for a porn website based on this idea. I told him it would have some merit but the costs involved in a porn startup were too rich for his blood. I would have been involved on the site design and maintenance end of things.
mak
Okay, as long as we’re linking to smokin’ hot M.E.-American girls, we cannot forget Sarah Shahi
brendancalling
now reading the comments of Schlussel et al, and they’re pathetic. What a bunch of angry idiots, looking for something to be angry about.
And daniel Pipes is just angry because he’s so fuckin’ ugly a woman of Fakih’s caliber wouldn’t even give him the time of day.
Lysana
@robertdsc: A couple of years ago, someone started a community on LiveJournal called “Fuck Arabs.” His intent was to be a bigot. Then someone hacked his account and gained admin rights to the community. It turned into “post pics of hot Arabs and drool at will” within hours of its creation. Not porn, but oh, the images…
HRa
I guess no one saw the crestfallen look of disgust and the very quiet murmur of what Mika said this am on Morning Joe. The retort from Joe was I guess you are an Arizonian.
Certainly I have no idea what Dearborn is like now. Still, in my past as I often vacationed at an aunt and uncles house , there was a fair amount of Albanians, Lebanese, etc. who lived in the neighborhood. Everyone was friendly to each other. People like the ones cited here are peddling hate. It really disgusts me.
I am glad she won.
Peter J
So, the deal is that you get 72? I can see the appeal in that. But then, it is probably just a scam, like the Soros’ money.
adolphus
@Purplegirl
Don’t forget Casey Kasem who has been subverting American pop music with subliminal Islamo-Fascist messages for 40 odd years. His long distant dedications were code for deploying car bombs.
Don’t even ask about the sub-texts of Shaggy’s subversion of Scooby.
Attis
@Bill E Pilgrim: yeah, but she’s a lot hotter looking than alien blancmange.
Greenhouse Guy
@mak: booya! That is all.
Asshole
No time to go through all of these comments, so I’m sorry if someone’s already mentioned this. I seem to remember that back in the late 1980s/early 1990s David Duke (of KKK fame) got some press because he was bitching about how long it had been since a white woman had won the Miss America pageant.
How is the complaining here any different?
Bubblegum Tate
@mak:
Wow. I almost drowned in my own saliva there.
Also, I would like to extoll the virtues of Nasim Pedrad. Funny and fine–now there’s a killer combo!
Perry Como
Emperor’s New Burkha?
burnspbesq
From now on, every time you see a woman in a burqa you’re going to wonder if she looks like that.
KRK
@adolphus:
Ralph Nader. Also, too.
MNPundit
Pissed off. Arab girls usually have big butts and wide hips and this one is only a little less stick-like than the usual brand of winner. Is it too much to ask for a real woman?
At least she’s not Carrie Prejean (yes I know she didn’t win).
maus
@Ash Can: I’ve seen on other political blogs the resident trolls calling out “I THOUGHT YOU LIBRULS THINK BEAUTY CONTESTS ARE DEMEANING TO WOMEN” and similar garbage.
Yeah, maybe, but that has nothing to do with our disgust towards *you*.
Fwiffo
I’d say there some affirmative action there. Affirmative action IN MY PANTS.
priscianus jr
@cmorenc:
“Built like a brick shithouse” is actually quite an old expression. And it isn’t used only for women, although that is a common usage. The first time I remember hearing it was when I was looking to buy my first (used) car and was partial to a particular car and my Dad (who was trying to dissuade me) said, “I admit the thing’s built like a brick shithouse.” My Dad was born in NYC towards the end of the First World War.
It’s certainly NOT derogatory. All it means is that something’s built way nicer and stronger than it needs to be. Normally a shithouse (privy) would be a very plain thing made of wood.
Fern
You sure about the Arab thing? Her family is from the Lebanon. To my eye she actually looks more Persian than Arab anyway.
D-Chance.
Gorgeous if you consider mannequins and the stick-figure drawings of 6-year olds “erotic art”, I suppose. Put about 20-30 pounds of meat on her, and we’ll talk gorgeous. Until then, she’s just another skeleton, sans the cocaine abuse.
Ross Hershberger
I’m in the Detroit area. Let me tell you, 1 out of 4 of the Lebanese and Arab American women around here are stunners. Like full on fall down in a fit gorgeous. And their sisters are pretty cute, too. Waitress in a diner calls you Habibi (darling) and you want to carry her away and marry her. Problems: their dads can be Very Traditional in outlook and they have serious brothers. Just as well, I suppose.
Ross Hershberger
Tiny Tim: Born in NYC to a Lebanese father and a Polish Jewish mother.
fucen tarmal
carrie prejean just took a short break from her current position, as my underdesk personal assistant, to say that john cole is being inappropriate. baloon juice readers are also being inappropriate…
now, from what i know of islam, their women are required to maintain an absence of body hair, don’t know if its a plus or a minus, its individual taste, but something to consider if you are thinking of mecca, and want to hajj one out.
saline me likem
Cris
I thought after the Cedar Revolution, we were all Lebanese now.
SiubhanDuinne
@MikeJ:
She announced several days ago, actually — at least< i first heard about it sometime last week. Here's the entirety of the Wiki article on her:
ETA: Okay, I did that thing of putting three underscores between paragraphs, and it kept everything in the same blockquote, which is what I wanted, but it also left the underscores showing, which I thought wasn’t supposed to happen. So next FYWP question is: how can you ensure that several paragraphs will stay within one blockquote while hiding your work?
russell
bikini jihad time!
limniade
Actually, if you check out that picture of Vanessa Williams on the stage, they’re pretty much the same size.
And personally, if that’s “needing a sandwich”, then I wish I needed a sandwich like that. She’s lean but with visible muscle tone. She looks fantastic.
fucen tarmal
@Cris:
i thought that was lilith fair.
Brachiator
Miss USA will be presenting the Top 10 List on Letterman on Tuesday night.
Honus
Is she a muslim? Not that it matters, but I’m an Arab-American, second generation, and my family and all of my relatives are Christians. And have been, longer than any other gentiles. We’re Lebanese Maronites. And she could be one, too.
Holden Pattern
@jibeaux: Night of the Avenging Blowfish is underappreciated. I love that book. I thought I was the only one.
Honus
@Fern: Lebanese are Arabs. Persians are not.
Honus
@adolphus: Michael DeBakey, George Halas, Doug Flutie, Frank Zappa, Bobby Rahal and Don Shula. And Khalil Gibran who wrote the saying “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
And since she is a Leb, there’s a good chance some french mixed with those Levantine genes, and the result speaks for itself.
Honus
“But that’s silly. Everyone knows that brown people can’t be real Americans!…ok, there’s Sowell, and Malkin, and Steele, but they’re not really brown, you see, they renounced their brownness for the One True Conservatism!”
and Spencer Abraham and John Sununu. They’re Arabs, too.
gil mann
@FlipYrWhig:
I’d steal that, but I’m guessing it’s only of use for this particular story.
Bill Murray
@jibeaux: Night of the Avenging Blowfish is an excellent book. I picked it up based on the name, and read it while stuck in an airport due to a snowstorm, so the melancholy tone went down well. What happened to John Welter? No published books since 1998, while expected he would have a Christopher Moore kid of career
trollhattan
@gil mann:
Nevertheless, it wins the internets for the day, and nominee for the week, also, too.
Is this where I mention Frank Zappa’s daddy was Greek-Arab, via Sicily? Sheik Yerbouti!
Sentient Puddle
I must say, thank you.
Honus
@LittlePig: or like a Lebanese. In fact, my Lebanese catholic family just opened the Ark at my nephew’s bar mitzvah last friday.
KS in MA
I hope she takes her scholarship and goes to law school and sues the bejeesus out of Schlussel (for whatever) someday.
leftist
I’m trying to imagine Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn obsessing about the ethnicity of the winner of a beauty contest.
Nope. Can’t do it.
But I can imagine Kim Il Sung or Manual Noriega or Saddam Hussein or the head of a Mexican drug cartel thinking about trophy women.
Pipes in other words is in good/bad company. This is all about patriarchy.
KevinNYC
Apparently, she is Shia Muslim and there is also a Christian side of her family and her family observe some of both faiths
Also how dishonest is Daniel Pipes. Look at the photo he uses for Miss USA. It’s not her in a beauty pageant. It looks like a school photo. It’s not in the article he links which has her looking glamorous from the pageant. How long did Pipes have to search to find a photo of her not looking smoking hot? And to think the Bush Administration appointed this jackhole to United States Institute of Peace
Sentient Puddle
@KevinNYC: If his intent was to find a photo of her that was as unflattering as possible, I’d say he still failed.
Mnemosyne
@SiubhanDuinne:
You only need 2 underscores, not 3.
Hob
@The Main Gauche of Mild Reason:
Well now… if you’re not lucky enough to have known the smoking hot young lady of Polish descent, and former Detroit-area resident, whom I dated for a few non-regrettable months in 2003… then I guess I understand your point of view, but that’s your loss. (Not that she would’ve been in a pageant anyway – too short & smart. I just want to assert that Michigan produces some fine fine ladies of all colors.)
Zuzu's Petals
@Mnemosyne:
ETA: Dang.
rikyrah
the comments on this thread alone were worth reading this post.
Greenhouse Guy
@leftist: nope.
lovable liberal
@Cacti: Oh, yeah, exactly. Feminine beauty is browning, and the wingnuts can’t take that.
Lex
OK, this is how much affirmative action this woman needed to win Miss USA: she not so long ago won a stripping contest without taking her clothes off.
Sorry, wingnuts, but Game Over.