Major Apologies are in Order as the Controversial Miss USA is Crowned Miss of the Whole Damned Universe
Well, well, well … how the turn tables.
While most of you spent Saturday night watching a 27-0 lead run down the Chargers metaphorical pant leg in Jacksonville, a different, though no less stunning, sort of victory was taking place a few hundred miles to the west in New Orleans. When former Miss Texas turned Miss USA R'Bonney Gabriel was given the tiara, sash and flowers befitting her new title as Miss Universe.
This Miss USA:
The one that her Miss USA competition got all catty toward on social media, like Miss New York Heather Nunez:
Particularly outspoken was Miss Montana, Heather O'Keefe, who did a series of scathing videos dragging Gabriel and the pageant organizers for putting the fix in. But suddenly now has nothing to say:
Ah, sweet tears of unfathomable sadness. When they are born out of jealousy like this, there is nothing so delicious.
These other Mean Girls can say what they want about the earlier pageant being fixed. Bitch all they want about how unfair it was. But what they can't do is complain about the results. The committee brought the crown home back to the U.S of A, and that's what it's all about. These losers don't have to like it. They don't have to apologize to Gabriel. But they should at least acknowledge the Miss USA organizers did their job. It's like that story I once heard Herb Brooks say. He was the last player cut from the 1960 Olympic hockey team. As you can well imagine, it destroyed him. And as he sat at home watching them win the gold, his father turned to him and said, "It looks like they made the right choice." A tough thing to hear from your dad, but look at how it worked out in the long run for Herb. You either take the L and use it to drive you to greatness like he did, or you jump on your socials to be all snarky toward the one who bested you. We know what they decided.
R'Bonney Gabriel is a mid-major that the committee put in the tournament over the righteous indignation of all the Selection Sunday panelists, but ended up making the Final Four. You can have all the love in your heart for the big basketball factories with 27 wins, but when they're going home and the small school you hated on is cutting down the net, you have to admit you're wrong.
So from one end of the cosmos to the other, they're celebrating the latest Earth woman to be named Miss Universe. And once again, it's our fellow American making us proud to be her countrymen. While all the haters who claimed it was rigged can piss all the way off. As that other great American champion Rocky Balboa put it, "This is how winning is done.":