Miss USA is Crowned; Conservatives Go Crazy

As someone from Michigan, I am glad Rima Fakih won Miss USA last night. And I don't care that she is Arab American. Again, coming from southeastern Michigan, I know that it's home to a lot of Arab Americans and it doesn't bother me...I think it adds to the character of my home state.


But it seems that there are some conservatives that don't feel that way. It seems that giving Ms. Fakih the honor of Miss USA was basically honoring terrorism. Rick Moran has the rundown of how some conservative commentators have gone off the deep-end in their condemnation of Fakih. Moran highlights one particular crazy, Debbie Schlussel, who goes off on a hate-filled rampage- throwing out accusations that can't be substantiated:

Rima Fakih, Miss Michigan USA, who will compete in Sunday Night’s pageant broadcast on NBC, is a Dearbornistan Shi’ite Muslim who is a supporter of Hezbollah and used the pageant name at a forum promoting Islamic subjugation of women. She was born in the Hezbollah stronghold of Srifa in South Lebanon, which Israel was forced to attack in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war because it was a site of Hezbollah weaponry. Her devout Muslim family comes from the Hezbollah-controlled South Lebanon. Intelligence sources confirm that at least three of Fakih’s relatives are currently top officials in Hezbollah and that at least eight Fakih family members were Hezbollah terrorists killed by the Israelis in past Israel-Lebanese wars and interventions. Some of her family members were originally in Harakat Amal [the Shi'ite Amal militia], which is now essentially a part of Hezbollah. There’s a reason that even Al-Manar TV–Hezbollah’s official TV network–is high on Fakih in the Miss USA pageant.

Last year’s Miss USA pageant was controversial because airheaded Miss California bimbo Carrie Prejean rode both sides of the fence in responding to pageant judge and gay activist Perez Hilton’s (a/k/a Mario Armando Lavandeira, Jr.) question about gay marriage. But will judges in this year’s pageant have the guts to ask Miss Michigan USA a far more important question: if she will condemn Hezbollah, the Islamic terrorist group which murdered over 300 US Marines and civilians in the 1983 bombings of the barracks and U.S. Embassy in Beirut? Will they ask her to condemn the group that tortured and trampled to death Navy Diver Robert Dean Stethem after hijacking TWA flight 847 and tortured to death Col. Rich Higgins and CIA attache William Buckley? The group working with Al-Qaeda to provide explosives to blow up our troops in Iraq and to blow up innocent civilians in several other Qaeda/Hezbollah joint ventures? Don’t count on it. And they have to ask her to specifically condemn Hezbollah. The usual nebulous “Islamic terrorists” condemnation doesn’t count because they don’t think any of their groups, like Hezbollah, are terrorists, but “legitimate resistance.” And don’t wait for them to ask her if she recognizes Israel’s right to exist.

First off, I how does she know that Fakhi's relatives are involved in Hezbollah? What "intelligence sources" does some blogger have? How is she responsible for the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beriut, something that took place three years before she was born?

I don't know about you, but where I come from (which happens to be the same state that Ms. Fakih and Ms. Schlussel come from) someone who judges someone based on their heritage is called a bigot.

There is too much of this crap taking place within conservatism. A legitimate concern over terrorism has been used to hide bigotry and hatred aimed towards Arabs and Muslims. I am thankful that people like Moran are calling people out on this and showing them for what they are: small, hateful beings.

And that's sad, because Rima Fakih's win is a testament to what makes America great. In other parts of the world, Ms. Fakih would not be able to wear a skimpy bathing suit and prance about a stage. Here is a woman who is Muslim, and able to be like any other woman. There was no religion or government that was stopping her. THAT is what is wonderful about our country. Melissa Couthier says it best:

She’s in America. She’s doing what beautiful American girls do. She’s acting Western.

In an Islamic country, she’d likely be hung, beheaded, tortured or “honor” killed for shaming her uptight, sexually repressed, backward, stone age husband or father.

So while I get that people are upset about this, I suggest taking the big picture here. We have a young Muslim woman, without a burqa, who won Miss USA.

Let the Islamofascists put that in their pipe and smoke it.

And by the way, did anyone notice that she's hot? If a gay man can say that, you know she has to be beautiful.