Winning isn’t everything. My parents tried hard to teach me this when I was young and now I am seeing that this statement holds more truth than I thought.
Recently, someone won the Miss USA 2009 pageant. Who was it? Miss Kentucky? Miss Florida? Hardly anyone remembers the crowning of Miss North Carolina as this year’s winner. This is because the media has been focusing on Carrie Prejean, Miss California, and her response during the question and answer portion of the program.
Openly gay judge Perez Hilton asked Prejean a politically charged question regarding same-sex marriage. When she responded by stating that she believed marriage should be between a man and a woman, Hilton was shocked and proceeded to lash out against her in his blog after the competition.
This captured the attention of the media and, as a result, Miss California has been the subject of almost every article and interview regarding the Miss USA 2009 pageant. Unfortunately, because of this event, Miss North Carolina hasn’t received much recognition for winning the contest.
The media has realized that we really aren’t interested in the winners anymore. These televised contests, game shows and reality shows do not exist so that we can watch people win, they exist so we can get involved in the drama along the way.
Another great example of this is Susan Boyle. She has not even participated in the final round of “Britain’s Got Talent” and she is already famous worldwide. She didn’t need to win to be successful. The fact that she has proven that she has a decent set of lungs despite her appearance has propelled her to the top of the media world. She has gained more media coverage now than the winner of any other reality show or contest.
We are bored with winners. With the increase of reality shows, talented people are winning all the time. In a sense, it has cheapened true talent. Who cares if someone can sing well, or if they are smart or beautiful? We are more interested in seeing the judges argue with a contestant over the fact that they lack talent than seeing the “best man win” because of the drama that’s involved.
Winning isn’t everything is an understatement. Nowadays, winning hardly means anything. Learn from “American Idol,” the show where more often than not the runner-up does better than the winner. It has become wildly popular across the nation, yet if you were to ask even a regular viewer to remember the winners of the last few seasons, they likely would not be able to.
When John Carpenter became the first to win a million dollars on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”, it was huge! When Kelly Clarkson won “American Idol” season one, everyone knew and when Richard Hatch remained the last contestant on the first season of “Survivor,” it was big news.
Now, here we are almost 10 years later and we could care less about who wins. So, I feel sorry for Miss North Carolina whose victory got brushed aside because of a petty argument over the ‘politically incorrect’ response given by Miss California. I guess she learned the hard way the age-old-lesson that winning really is not everything.