Being Miss America: Behind the Rhinestone Curtain (Discovering America) (24 page)

Tapper certainly couldn’t foresee that Harold would become, in essence, the boss of her own boss, George Bauer. But in a way, it was inevitable that it would come to this. For more than a decade, MAO had rewarded young women for speaking their minds, both politically and with respect to their platform issues. The crown had elevated Miss America to the point where she had a voice. And this was the first time a Miss America had clearly and cannily used that voice to take the lead and put the organization in its place. It was the most glaring example of a phenomenon unique to Miss America in the late 1990s and early 2000s: once yesterday’s demure pageant contestant evolved into today’s strong and opinionated young leader, the MAO leadership had absolutely no idea what to do with her.

Clearly, George Bauer was losing control. He had lost control of the Rebekah Revels situation. He had lost control of Erika Harold. He had provided an all-access pass to
USA Today
’s Olivia Barker, who spent pageant week alongside the contestants; she actually participated in almost every phase of competition as the “52nd contestant.” In return, she wrote a generally unflattering piece about the pageant, which was mostly overshadowed by all the other dovetailing PR disasters. In September 2003, Harold would pass her crown to another tough cookie, Ericka Dunlap (2004), whose platform issue of promoting cultural diversity was the manifestation of a strong African
American identity. Later, pageant officials would whisper that the two Eri(c)kas had nearly killed the pageant. It’s true that they made things more difficult for the leadership, who chose a strategy that was the exact opposite of effective. Trying to quash Harold and Dunlap, or any other Miss America, was a bad idea. It would have been far smarter to try working with them, collaborating, listening to their thoughts, and allowing them to help build a better MAO. But although Miss America herself had evolved, the pageant was still hanging on to the antiquated notion that a strong woman must be controlled. It probably was no coincidence that perceived “manageability” began to pop up in Miss America judging literature and training as one of the critical personality traits for a winner.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this was the exact moment at which the platform issue began to fade. For Bauer, it must have served as a nasty reminder to him of getting pies in the face from all directions. It did have a prominent last gasp, when Lauren Nelson (2007) became involved in a sting operation for Internet sex predators. Despite the debatable legality of this type of undertaking, the media were largely positive about Miss America posing as an underage girl to catch child molesters on Long Island. But when prosecutors called to let Nelson’s scheduling manager know when she would be needed in court, they were told that her packed calendar might render her unavailable to testify. To say the least, the subsequent fallout reversed all of the positive press MAO had initially gotten.

A final note on the significance of the Rebekah Revels incident: aside from inciting a five-year legal battle of indeterminate expense, the mess pointed up that there was little coordination between the national MAO office and its state franchisees. There is no clear policy on how to handle explosive situations. MAO typically lets the states handle
what they consider to be “state business,” despite the fact that said state business can blow up in the face of the national pageant. This has happened again and again, when state pageants have belatedly discovered their titleholder faked her academic credentials (Ohio 1998, for example), or contestants struggle to collect the scholarships they’ve won (South Carolina 2002, 2004, New York 2004, California 2003, Maryland 2004, 2006, and plenty of others), or state leaders encourage contestants to write letters of support to a former executive director around the time he is sentenced to fourteen years in prison for child molestation (South Carolina again, in a little-reported doozy), or are investigated by the attorney general for tax evasion (South Carolina, for the trifecta). A 2007
New York Times
article detailed the stories of contestants nationwide, who “describe a Miss America system in which local pageant directors do not return telephone calls and e-mail messages for months, local competitions close down before scholarships are distributed, and the fine print in contracts creates hurdles. Local winners across the country have threatened legal action, and some have taken it.”

However, until the situation in question becomes a full-fledged PR disaster (and sometimes, even after it does), MAO’s common practice is to stick the “state business” label on it and send it back to the state to fix. Consider one more situation that arose in South Carolina in 2010. Carl Chu, a Kansas City pageant coach, was invited to judge the Palmetto State’s annual pageant. First problem? According to Miss America’s own policy, coaches—and others who may benefit financially from a pageant—are prohibited from judging any competition, due to potential conflicts of interest. MAO officials should not have allowed Chu to serve as a judge, especially since at the time they were reviewing the state judging rosters very carefully. And the South Carolina leadership, who certainly knew about the rule, should also have realized that he couldn’t judge. Chu
himself was probably the least culpable participant in the matter; he was primarily involved in pageant systems other than Miss America, so he may not have been tracking every rule. But the state pulled a fast one, and MAO—which, for years, consistently seemed to have a palmetto-shaped blind spot—didn’t provide the appropriate oversight.

Imagine the surprise, then, when Chu went public within days of the new Miss South Carolina’s crowning, alleging that some very sketchy goings-on had occurred. Unlike most whistle-blowers in the Miss America rank and file, Chu didn’t air his grievances anonymously in an Internet forum, or write a strongly worded letter to Atlantic City, or simply take his ball and go home pouting. And he didn’t make insinuations: he flat out stated that the Miss South Carolina Pageant had been fixed.

Chu’s story was unique in its directness, to be sure, but also revelatory regarding the hubris with which some state directors operated.

According to Chu, the Miss South Carolina organization’s president, Joseph P. Sanders III—who, along with his wife, Gail Sanders, had run the pageant for more than fifty years and had been honored with MAO’s volunteer of the year award—had not been happy with the judges’ scoring of the preliminary competitions. Almost every state holds a post-preliminary meeting at which judges determine the top ten (or fifteen, in some larger states and the national finals). Although the methods change periodically, the rules about who is permitted to speak, and who is absolutely not allowed to, are consistent and very specific. Judges are allowed to speak, with time and content restrictions; the purpose is for each judge to indicate the reasons why he or she believes each of the highest-scoring contestants is (or is not) a strong candidate for the job. Directors and other officers of the pageant, however, are not allowed to participate in this conversation except to moderate the judges’
discussion or to be available in the rare case when a procedural clarification needs to be made.

Sanders, however, reportedly jumped right into the fray without hesitation. In a later interview with the
Spartanburg Herald Journal
, Chu alleged that Sanders reprimanded the judges for the quality of their scoring. And it didn’t stop there; Sanders allegedly “lobbied on several contestants’ behalf, [and] brought up several of the girls’ family histories and wealth, political connections and the number of ads they sold for the nearly 900-page pageant program.” Chu himself called it a “campaign session for some of these girls . . . this is totally, 100 percent outside the spectrum of what is supposed to be disclosed. He’s not even supposed to be in the room.” According to Chu, when he objected to being told to focus on two specific contestants (rather than all of those whose scores placed them in contention), Sanders told him, “Don’t mess with it.”

Sanders vehemently denied the allegations. Rumors about Chu’s behavior during the pageant—including one preposterous story about him hitting on Miss South Carolina’s Outstanding Teen in a hot tub—began to work their way around pageant circles. Very few believed those allegations; the Sanders family had burned through most of their political capital by then, and their influence had significantly waned.

Plus, Chu (who, by any empirical assessment, had little to gain by bringing down the Miss South Carolina Pageant) stuck to his story. And more and more media sources picked it up. Four days after the first story was published, MAO announced that Sanders and his wife, Gail, were “retiring.”

Perhaps the most striking element of this story, however, wasn’t the judge who shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Nor was it the possibility that the selection process had been corrupted. The real bombshell was the state
ment from Sharon Pearce, Miss America’s in-house public relations executive (who was, a year later, promoted to vice president, where she would earn a six-figure salary): “
‘The national organization wants to make sure each state is following the rules and guidelines established’ for their respective organizations, she said. ‘This is a state issue, and we will certainly look into it. This is a South Carolina issue, and is not related to the Miss America Organization. We’ll be happy to look into it.’
”

Not related to the Miss America Organization
. Sadly, this is not an exception to the rule; it’s emblematic of MAO’s philosophy regarding its franchisees. It’s one of the reasons there’s so little turnover among state executive directors, especially those who probably should have gotten their pink slips long ago. Without the organizational skills and/or staff competency to enforce the pageant’s own rules, MAO takes every possible opportunity to offload responsibility onto state organizations. This practice means that oversight from MAO itself is severely limited; for example, complaints from volunteers, contestants, and fans—about concerns such as possible corruption or ethical violations—are re-routed to that state’s executive director for “investigation” and resolution. Detailed investigation by the national office is usually limited to instances in which the news media pick up the story. But if, for instance, you’re a contestant who notices something untoward about your state pageant’s proceedings, and if you take the time to sit down and write a letter to the Miss America staff about the situation, chances are that it will land right back in the lap of the state director whose negligence may have led to the very incident you’re reporting. It’s the equivalent of an external audit being performed on an organization’s finances and then reported back to the finance department for dissemination. There will be no consequences, because the buck stops precisely with the person or persons who are the source of the original problem.

Another example: In 2009, current and former volunteers got together to attempt a takeover of one state pageant. Their franchise application included a painstakingly detailed account of alleged abuses by, and grievances against, the executive director of that state’s program. The incidents included everything from emotional abuse to failure to pay appropriate taxes on merchandise sold at fund-raisers, and included accounts provided by former state titleholders of their experiences. One titleholder recounted rumors that the director had concocted about her excessive drinking and inappropriate sexual behavior. Another described throwing her arms up in front of her face when she suddenly feared that her boss was going to hit her. Compelling stuff, and about as far as one can get from the stated mission of the Miss America Organization.

MAO staff did nothing. Except to privately characterize it as “character assassination.” The board of directors’ Franchise Committee reportedly recommended against renewing the state’s contract, but were overruled by high-ranking officials.

It takes a great deal of courage to speak up about possible corruption within the Miss America Organization. And most of the time, the consequence of trying to retain the pageant’s integrity is that the informer is blacklisted from future participation. For those who have volunteered for years, even decades, with the goal of providing opportunities for the young women who benefit, it’s easier to turn a blind eye and continue working on the micro level. No one wants to see the institution collapse. And everyone is afraid to be the one accused of bringing about its failure.

As for George Bauer, he would go the way of his predecessors, Rob Beck and Bob Renneisen, when the pageant was dropped by ABC following the 2004 telecast. Bauer allegedly knew that the network was bailing out shortly after the September show aired, but instead of informing the board, he reportedly went on vacation. In the wake of
his departure from the organization, Deidre Downs (2005) would hold the title for an unprecedented fifteen months. Meanwhile, pageant officials scrambled to find a new television partner home for the show.

After a wild ride that saw Miss America supervised by—and then waving good-bye to—four CEOs between late 1998 and late 2004, facing massive budgetary challenges and its first bout of network homelessness since the beginning of television, it was the perfect moment for a thorough institutional audit by an outside entity. Had MAO brought in the pros to advise them on reorganizing, eliminating waste and redundancy, and efficiently securing and spending money, it could have had a tremendously positive impact. In fact, it’s almost impossible to imagine that an institution in so much trouble on so many fronts could ignore the warning signs—and the problem wasn’t simply that the board happened to hire the wrong executives.

But, of course, none of that happened. In fact, a new regime would soon take hold of Miss America’s destiny and make it clear that dissenters were less welcome than ever.

THIRTEEN

When you’ve dedicated a great deal of time—a year of your life—and almost always more—to something you love, you don’t want to watch it die. In fact, the urge to help, to devote even more hours, to try to right the ship, becomes overwhelming
.