The GOP Borg and their drones are drooling over the fact that Sarah Palin was a beauty queen back in the day who competed in the 1984 Miss Alaska pageant.While surfing The Net I pondered an interesting thought. Being the pageant junkie I am, I was struck by the notion that the Rethuglicans and the Right Wing Noise Machine would have been crowing nonstop about the fact if she'd won. Why aren't they?
Turns out Sarah Get Your Gun didn't win back in 1984, she was the runner up. Wanna guess who she lost to?
A sistah.
In a state that has a 3.7% African-American population, she lost to an African-American woman. No wonder Idaho-born Caribou Barbie's hatin' on us.
Yes peeps, there are Black people who live in Alaska. Some came there to work on the Alaska pipeline back in the 70's and stayed. Others were assigned there during the course of their military service and grew to love the state. Others moved there from the Lower 48 to get a fresh start in life. There is a large enough community of African-Americans there to hold their own Juneteenth celebration and elect Bettye Davis to the Alaska Senate.
In some delicious irony Palin lost that pageant to Maryline Blackburn, an Army brat who was born in Europe, grew up in Fairbanks and became the first African-American to win Miss Alaska and represent the state in the Miss America pageant. Ms. Blackburn is an accomplished singer now based in the ATL and Obama supporter. She also had some interesting things to say about her one time competitor.
Here's hoping that history repeats itself in two months and Ms. Palin finds herself on the losing end of another major contest to an African-American.
