Last week I told you about “Miss Liberty America,” the beauty pageant that, among other things, will evaluate contestants based on marksmanship (rifles and pistols only), CPR, fitness, and knowledge of the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. I referred to it, somewhat in jest, as “the first-ever Tea Party beauty pageant.” This morning I received a message from Alicia Hayes-Roberts, sister of Tea Party presidential candidate Rutherford B. Hayes, and founder of the pageant. Her concern? Being tagged as a Tea Party operation might be bad for business.
“We don’t want to be associated with that,” Hayes-Roberts told me. “We’re a corporation, we are a for-profit operation, and I can’t have that.”
For one thing, she explained, Miss Liberty America is hoping to promote diversity (the judging panel “will consist equally of African American, Caucasian, Hispanic, and Asian judges to more closely represent America”), and Hayes-Roberts is concerned that the Tea Party tag might complicate matters. For another, she just doesn’t consider the event’s core message to be anything out of the mainstream. “This fringe
—
you’ve got fringe on the left, fringe on the right. I want to be associated with what the meat of America is.”
“I’m trying to bring people together, not separate people. And there are some organizations that do nothing but segregate people.”
So let me clarify: Miss Liberty America is not a Tea Party pageant; it’s just a beauty pageant that awards a lifetime NRA membership to the winner, has a goal of “restoring Liberty to the United States” and promotes “personal responsibility,” employs a North American Union-fearing presidential candidate as its Chief Financial Officer, and quizzes its contestants on the founding documents. For the record.
