Nina Davuluri

Last week, America was allegedly aghast over the first Indian Miss America. TIME said the pageant had become “Marred by Racist Slurs.” Huffington Post described a “flurry of indignation” and CNN said she was “attacked.” MSNBC said viewers “lashed out” at the winner for “her ethnicity.”

So what was all this hateful bile America was spewing? What was so repugnant it made Stephen Colbert “totally lose it”? Once again, the answer is: nothing. Without exception, the outrage was related to Tweets. That’s right. Twitter. The place in cyberland where adolescents tell their 13 followers how tired they are and say, “Fuck you faggot” to their friend who refuses to root for Green Bay. You know you’re desperate to find a villain when you have to mine the flippant comments of 500 million users to locate examples. Wow, a teenager named Dallas thinks Indians are Arabs. Oh no, a fat kid named Colton thinks the Miss America contestant did “Egypt dancing.” You know what else teenagers say? “This apartment isn’t zombie-proof.”

One of the most quoted Tweeters during this fake crisis was someone who goes by the screen name @emi_adkins and told Davuluri “you look like a terrorist.” This person has zero followers. The only Tweet from an account of any consequence was Fox News contributor Todd Starnes who said, “Miss Kansas, a gun-toting, deer-hunting, military veteran was America’s choice – but not the liberal Miss America judges’ choice.” Starnes is the author of the book Dispatches from Bitter America which depicts a pair of overalls carrying a gun and a Bible. If he can’t prefer the contestant who was a gun-toting war vet, who can?

And he’s right! America did choose the gun-toting contestant via social media, but the judges overrode them and went for the diversity dollar. Once again, the root of all evil is the notorious hatefact. The judges Starnes claims are not exactly in line with Miss Kansas include the very gay Lance Bass, the even more gay Mario Cantone, the seemingly lesbian Barbara Corcoran, the rumored to be gay Joshua Bell, and an androgynous looking chef with a “big gay following.”

These are the people are in charge of choosing America’s ideal woman. They misjudged and all Starnes did was call them on it. The media throw him in with millions of dumb teenagers and now it’s all part of a racist attack. (The gays seem particularly incensed by all this as characterized by Josh Kruger’s “Pathetic White Racism” rant.)

I believe the media created this mythical backlash for the same reason the judges overrode the voters and went for an Indian. They’re trying to shock us into tolerance by giving us some tough love that’s ultimately better for us as a country. Hey idiots, we already had an Arab Miss USA and she was way terroristier than this one. When the mind-blowingly hot Rima Fakih won, the reaction from America was mostly, “Hmm. Pretty.” It was the Muslims who were outraged. We’re not xenophobic. We’re Western chauvinists and we’re right.

So here’s the deal, TIME, HuffPo, CNN, MSNBC, NYT, and a pile of gay judges: I’m not looking for life lessons. I’m not blind. Newly crowned Miss America Nina Davuluri is a stunner. I don’t think I’d kick her out of bed if she tried to kill me. Besides the somewhat hirsute lower back, I find East Indians to be some of the hottest women around. I also think they make great Americans and have said so on many occasions. However, like Todd Starnes, I don’t appreciate patronizing lessons from liberal gays on what woman I should like. I also deeply resent the implication that Americans are racist. The only thing more annoying than this accusation is the endless depths “journalists” will go to prove it.