Frugal Café Blog Zone

Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on June 16, 2009

I remember wincing and mumbling a few snide retorts when I read a blurb back in late March about how Miss Universe, former Miss Venezuela Dayana Mendoza, had visited the Guantánamo Bay prison for terrorists. The beauty queen proclaimed that she loved it there so much that she didn’t want to leave.

Huh?

Stereotypes about bubble-headed beauty queens in bathing suits and 4-inch stilettos strutted through my head and I wanted to write a post about it. Desperately wanted to, because my brain was brimming over with countless snarky “solid gold” metaphors and similes about the idiocy and cluelessness of beauty queens.

But, time didn’t permit, and the poke-the-beauty-queen-in-the-eye post was never written. Plus, I lost interest.

I’m glad now that mean-spirited post didn’t get written. Because today, I’d write it far differently. And I’d not mock Miss Mendoza as zealously and nastily as I would have a few months ago. In fact, I will not mock her at all.

My change of heart is partly because I detest the rabid hate attacks against beauty queen Carrie Prejean. I’ve re-evaluated my unfair, automatic bias against beautiful women and people’s cruel maligning of them and their intelligence when their opinions differ, and because—most importantly because—of infuriating stories like this in the Miami Herald about the infamous terrorist detainment center:

Miami Herald
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba

These captives already get to order fast-food takeout from the base and have access to a phone booth for weekly calls. Now some 17 Uighur Muslims awaiting a nation to grant them asylum are about to go high-tech, with laptops and web training.

While awaiting details of President Barack Obama’s order to close the prison camps by Jan. 22, commanders here have ordered 20 laptops for the captives of Camp Iguana.

”As you know, detainees are leaving this place,” said Army Lt. Col. Miguel Mendez, who oversees detainee classes, a multilingual library and now-emerging virtual computer lab. “We’re getting them computer classes to prepare for their return.”

Is this for real? Classes and laptops for terrorists? We’re paying for these released terrorist detainees to better improve themselves for… being smarter and better equipped the next time they attack? What in the heck is Obama/the government/the military thinking? Who approved this outrageous, asinine idea?

Commentator Julia Gorin opined, “When the headlines are more over-the-top than any joke one can form from them, it certainly makes comedy challenging. ‘Try making the idea of released detainees going back to terrorism funny’? Hey, according to the Pentagon, only 11 percent of them do that! (Though I hear that estimate has a margin of error of about 89%.) …One released detainee detonated himself in Iraq a couple months ago. And our liberals are worried about us dripping water on their faces…”

About the whole Miss Universe “I Love Gitmo” blog posting and the character assassination that was launched against her by a number of groups:

Excerpt from Jules Crittenden:

…That Dear Diary entry may look like something Iowahawk freelanced to the Onion, but apparently it’s real. Miss Universe was deployed with Crystle Stewart, who is Miss USA, by the United Service Organizations (USO), which reports the Miss Universe Organization (USO) has a long history of supporting the troops. Miss Venezuela Dayana Mendoza, by the way, was crowned Miss Universe in July 2008 in Nha Trang, Vietnam. It’s like she’s the In-Your-Face Ambassador of Free World Hotness to the Commie Holdout World.

Powerline with some background that might explain why a prison full of terrorists makes the delightful Miss Universe so bubbly: She was once kidnapped and held for ransom in the Wannabe Commie Holdout nation of her birth.

Miss Mendoza got a lot of heat and criticism for what she posted on her personal blog about her tour of Gitmo. That blog posting has since been deleted. I did locate a beauty queen blog that preserved some of it.

Beauty in Pageants
Miss Universe Blog Post on Fun at Gitmo

Miss Universe’s blog posting about having fun at Guantanamo Bay has vanished from the pageant’s Web site as embarrassed officials try to quash what they call a misunderstanding.

A flurry of critical commentary and news stories over the Venezuelan beauty queen’s lighthearted post underscores that the military prison at Guantanamo remains a damaging symbol for the United States.

Dayana Mendoza’s now-deleted late-March posting sounded like a note home from a spring breaker.

“We hung out with the guys from the East Coast and they showed us the boat inside and out, how they work and what they do, we took a ride around the land and it was a loooot of fun!” Mendoza wrote.

“The water in Guantanamo Bay is soooo beautiful!” she wrote at another point.

Those descriptions did not refer to the detention center for alleged terrorists, which occupies a sliver of the 45-square-mile (116-square-kilometer) base.

In a brief mention of the detainee camp, Mendoza said her group “saw the jails, where they shower, how they recreate themselves with movies, classes of art, books.” She described the prison only as “very interesting.”

In place of her posting Wednesday was a statement from Paula M. Shugart, president of the Miss Universe Organization, who said Mendoza and Miss USA Crystle Stewart had gone to Guantanamo on a USO tour to boost the morale of U.S. troops.

Shugart said Mendoza, in her post about having a fun trip, was referring to “the hospitality she received while meeting the members of the U.S. military and their families.”

Still, the affair angered some Venezuelans, who said Mendoza had harmed their country’s image by speaking positively about Guantanamo, where 240 men remain locked up by the U.S.

The beauty queens weren’t the first celebrities to go to the isolated U.S. Naval base in southeast Cuba. Country rocker Charlie Daniels was there in 2002, singing “The devil went down to Gitmo, he was looking for some Taliban” in front of cheering soldiers. The Victoria’s Secret models visited in December 2007, and participated in a Christmas parade. Portland rockers Everclear were there in 2008 and Art Alexakis, the band’s leader, said “we had a great time.”

Mendoza was crowned Miss Universe last year at a pageant in Nha Trang, Vietnam.

Concerning the relocation of prisoners and the closure of Club Gitmo, Pres. Obama’s stance and skeleton plan of implementation keeps wavering and shifting about what to do with those pesky terrorists. No one wants them, especially their home countries. Why? BECAUSE THEY ARE TERRORISTS.

This from Greg Gutfeld at Big Hollywood:

So President Obama finally figured out what to do with those detainees at Gitmo, and it only cost $12 million per captive. That’s right: we’re sending those 17 Chinese Muslim terror suspects currently at Gitmo to a place called Palau, in exchange for 200 million bucks in aid.

FYI: Palau is a little island somewhere near the Philippines, with a population of about 20,000 people. It was also the site for “Survivor,” twice – so it’s obviously familiar with housing no-good, belligerent ass-hats. So let me get this straight: Obama’s solution for fulfilling his promise to dismantle a prison camp in a foreign land… is to replace it with another prison camp in a foreign land. Truly, this is change we can believe in.

Gutfeld’s right. Heck, I say leave the terrorists where they are. Why would moving them to yet another high-security facility be any different from them being at Guantánamo Bay? I say no to mixing them in with non-terrorist prisoners in the US, because those guys in the Big House kick around and share ideas about perfecting their crimes. No need to add “Terrorist 101″ academia to our otherwise garden-variety convicts’ revenge arsenal. Home-grown terrorists do quite well on their own without Obama helping them along in their “kill the infidels” studies.

Not only would we save a tremendous amount of money by leaving them at Club Gitmo, but if the surrounding beaches are beautiful enough for Miss Universe, heck, they should be good enough for a couple hundred or so bloodthirsty extremists and terrorists. Granted, they don’t get to go down to the beach as often as they would probably like. But, should boredom set in, they can still use those American taxpayer-funded laptop computers they have while munching down on those Internet-ordered fast-food burgers.

Miss Mendoza was right: who’d want to leave such a beautiful place where you’re rewarded for your terrorism with free education, are fed well, are allowed to pray on schedule, are treated far better than any prison in a socialist or third-world nation would EVER dream of treating you… unless of course, you have a pressing agenda outside Club Gitmo. Like, let’s say… returning to terrorism and killing more innocent people.

Related stuff about Gitmo:
America Speaks: Leave GITMO As Is, Keep Terrorists Outside Our Borders
Power Line: Miss Universe Displays Better Judgment than President Obama and Resounding Rejection of Gitmo Plan
Big Hollywood: Pageant RELEASES Topless Miss Universe Photos
Steven Crowder: Guantanamo Bay: Up Close and Personal
The Miami Herald, Guantánamo: Guantánamo Camps commander defends celebrity visits
Michelle Malkin: Report: Supermax beds being cleared for Gitmo detainees and Dems on Gitmo transfer funds: Shhhhhhhhh! and “I am a proud American and I oppose the closing of Guantanamo Bay” and 11 Gitmo recidivists on Saudi’s Most Wanted List and Close-Gitmo Dems won’t put money where their mouths are and Flip-flop watch: Obama will now fight release of “torture” photos and Back to Gitmo: Senate votes down closure funding, 90-6; judge rules indefinite detention can continue and No more O-Kumbaya: Gunmen attack US embassy in Yemen and “Rehab:” Gitmo recidivists thumb their noses in new video and Here’s your jihadi recidivism
Julia Gorin, Big Hollywood: Answering Steven Crowder’s Challenge
Hot Air: Congress: Not so fast on closing Gitmo
Burt Prelutsky, Big Hollywood: Ms. Bonner, Mr. Powell and Why I’m Now a Democrat
John Romano, Big Hollywood: Obama in Egypt
Inside Gitmo: The True Story Behind the Myths of Guantanamo Bay
Endre Balogh, Big Hollywood: Will the Last Terrorist to Leave Gitmo Please Turn Out the Lights?

Categories: Beauty World, Bless Our Troops, Entertainment, Celebrities, Government, International Relations, National Security, Social and Political Climate
Tags: beauty pageant, beauty queen, Carrie Prejean, Club Gitmo, Dayana Mendoza, Dayana Mendoza photos, Gitmo, Guantanamo Bay, Islam, Miss Universe, Miss Universe photos, Miss USA, Miss Venezuela, Muslim, Obama, Paradise Guantánamo, political, politics, terrorism, terrorists, USO, War on Terror, war on terrorism