UPDATE: Miss Puerto Rico, Zuleyka Rivera, is the new Miss Universe!
Exactly a week after I posted the original story regarding Miss Universe and the ongoing poll at the 'Missosology' website, out comes today's 'Hurriyet,' the Turkish daily (reputable but somewhat of the sensationalist nature,) with a 'coincidental' article about the very same thing. Except this time, the writer of the article is misleading the public into thinking that a vote for Miss Turkey will result in her somehow easily winning the crown. Am I missing something here or are they misinformed, and don't realize that Missosology (setup for the sole purpose of analyzing beauty pageants) is a 'far-eastern' based website, one of many 'unofficial' sites designed to promote candidates from their perspective points of origin. In fact, out of the 100,000 plus votes cast so far, Miss USA has only received about 300 or so votes, with Miss Indonesia at the top. Hardly a definitive poll for, after all, an American event. (UPDATE: Since then, Hurriyet has changed the article and erased any references to the original mis-representation of the facts.)
By the way, since my original post asking people to vote for Miss Turkey, and before the article appeared in Hurriyet urging the same, the total votes cast for Miss Turkey was about 12,000 taking her to third place, for whatever it's worth. (By July 23, Miss Turkey was in first place with more than 25,000 votes.)
It is easy to see that although our (myself included) overall intentions are admirable, the referenced Turkish newspaper 'unknowingly' or without the investigative approach to the whole thing, is finding itself promoting an unofficial website, whereas my intentions were clearly designed to promote the pride of Turkey and everything Turkish, including in this case, Miss Turkey in an international setting. Do I honestly think Miss Turkey deserves the third spot over many other beauties? Do I think this poll will determine the winner of the real people's choice? I'll leave that up to you and the judges. One thing for sure, this particular poll clearly has no bearing on the outcome. I wonder why 'Hurriyet' would even pick such a poll to promote (they might as well have started one of their own.) Or did they simply follow my lead.
The article in Hurriyet goes on to say that Miss Turkey 'befriended' Miss Turks and Caicos, (simply because the two of them appeared in a picture together.) I should know since I am here at the site where the preparations are taking place and I see Miss Turkey doing the rounds with other countries as well.
Shame on you Hurriyet!
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