Terry Mitchell

Child Selected as New Miss America



Posted: Wednesday, January 19, 2011

by Terry Mitchell
http://commenterry.blogs.com

I have a major problem with the fact that 17-year-old Teresa Scanlan of Omaha, Nebraska, was recently selected as the new Miss America.  Nothing personal against Teresa, but I find her selection completely outrageous. Why? Because, in the eyes of the law, a 17-year-old is a minor – a child. I cannot understand why more people do not share my outrage. Where are all those child advocacy groups? Where are people like John Walsh? Why have they suddenly fallen silent?

The operators of the Miss America Pageant are exploiting a child and no one is speaking up. Doesn’t anyone care that they paraded a child across the stage on national TV wearing only a skimpy black bikini? Why aren’t the broadcasters of that event being investigated for child pornography? At a minimum, they should be forced to send Teresa home and choose a legitimate candidate – an adult woman – for the role of Miss America.

Could it be that this whole “child protection” craze in this county is completely arbitrary? In other words, for situations in which overzealous child protection Nazis want minors to get the benefits of adulthood, they will simply ignore the fact that these kids are minors. For situations in which they desire protection for them, they will quickly point out the fact that these are children. They can’t continue to have it both ways.
Terry Mitchell is a software engineer, freelance writer, amateur political analyst, and blogger from Virginia, USA. He posts a least one article a day to his blog - http://commenterry.blogs.com - on subjects such as current events, politics, technology, society and culture, religion, health and well-being, self improvement, personal finance, trivia, and sports. He is also the owner of a new privacy-enhanced search engine - http://www.SearchMost.com.

This Article has been viewed 1,346 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)
» left by Jean Horst
 1 year 124 days ago.
178 fans.
There is something a little odd about this, I agree. I've been wondering about this subject for a while - for instance - I don't understand the Justin Bieber craze, for the same reason - he's a CHILD! Teenage girls, I understand. Grown women, not so much. These teenagers that we allow to become objectified at young ages rarely make it into adulthood intact. The list is long and sad. I hope this young girl has a good experience as Miss America and a successful transition into adulthood.

Look Terry! We agree!
» left by Terry Mitchell 1 year 124 days ago.
93 fans.
Jean, I'm glad you agree. The new Miss America seems mature enough, but her age really concerns me. And don't act like this is the first time we've agreed on something. :-)
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.