When Donald Trump speaks, all I hear is BLAH BLAH BLAH…
That’s because I have a longstanding policy to ignore public bombast. It’s not political, although during election years, I tune out a lot of campaign rhetoric from all sides of the political spectrum. Even when professional football players trash talk other players and teams before a big game, I turn the channel. I refuse to accept hate-mongering as a valid means of communicating one’s opinion or position on anything.
Donald Trump manages to offend me so quickly, he can barely get out a full xenophobic sentence before I ignore him completely. But I was really upset when The Donald announced his candidacy for President and told the world what he REALLY thought about Mexicans. It wasn’t necessarily his message, because all I heard was BLAH BLAH BLAH before I turned the channel. It was the inevitable aftermath of his hateful rant that bothered me. When NBC and Univision cut ties with him and refused to air the Miss USA Pageant on July 12th, I felt terrible because I worried how it would affect Liz.
Liz Cardillo is the reigning Miss Pennsylvania USA. I recently lunched with Liz and her mother to talk about adoption for a feature I’m writing for Pittsburgh Parent Magazine. Liz, who was adopted by Sally and Vince Cardillo when she was 3 days old, is a passionate advocate for adoption and has made it her goal to raise public awareness of the needs of foster and adoptive children. She volunteers at a nonprofit organization that provides adoption services, counselling, training and housing for pregnant women and foster children in crisis.
When I met Liz, she didn’t feel well. She was battling a cold. And if you’re wondering what a beauty queen would have for lunch at The Cheesecake Factory, it was hot tea, but not because she had a cold. There’s something about knowing that millions of people are going to see you wearing a bathing suit that makes you very careful about your diet, she said.
Liz impressed me. Despite feeling under the weather, she was poised, mature and gracious. She spoke with heartfelt compassion about women who have the courage to give their baby up for adoption, knowing they are not the right person to raise a child.
“I’ve met celebrities before,” Liz said. “But these women are superheroes to me.”
Donald Trump can create his own beauty pageant to boost his ego. He can use his cunning to get the better of his business adversaries. He can make the words “You’re fired” iconic. He can run for President and maybe even trump all our expectations in the coming months.
But at the Miss USA Pageant on Sunday, there’s at least one beautiful young woman who knows what a real superhero is.
And Donald can’t trump that.
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photo credit: <ahref=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/22007612@N05/5440002785″>Donald Trump</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a>