Misssssss Laaaand Mine!
[Straits Times] A BEAUTY pageant in which landmine victims were to compete to win a prosthetic limb has been cancelled after the Cambodian government said it was in bad taste, organisers said Monday.
I'd prob'ly have to sit and think for a month and a half to think of anything in any worse taste.
In the 'Miss Landmine Cambodia' contest, competitors from around the country were due to appear in a photo exhibition opening on Friday in Phnom Penh, followed by an Internet voting campaign to select the best candidate. 'I'm not looking forward to breaking the news to the 20 candidates involved, as I know they will be very disappointed in the lack of support from Cambodian authorities,' Norwegian pageant director Morten Traavik told AFP.
Look on the bright side: you can probably out-run them.
He said the exhibition will not take place after Cambodia's Ministry of Social Affairs demanded cancellation of the contest to protect 'the honour and dignity of people with disabilities'.
Sense from a government functionary? When did that start?
However the contest, intended to raise awareness about landmines and empower the disabled, will continue with Internet voting at miss-landmine.org, Traavik said.
"We may be in bad taste, but we're determined, by Gum!"
'The event as planned is cancelled... But the project moves squarely to website voting,' he said. 'I think it is regrettable that we were not able to show this project freely in Cambodia,' he added.
Raises my level of respect and sympathy for the Cambodes...
And so Miss Pho? What would you like to see in your lifetime?
World Peace. And a lot less landmines...
The first 'Miss Landmine' contest was held in Angola last year, drawing protests from rights activists who viewed it as exploitative and racist.
I can't see the racist part, not being a trained racial observer, but I can see the exploitative part without even turning my head and squinting...
Cambodia remains one of the world's most heavily mined countries, along with Afghanistan and Angola. Hundreds of people are killed or maimed every year by the millions of landmines and other unexploded ordnance still littering the countryside after decades of conflict.
That's probably going to an extreme, but Miss Wooden Leg is way the other end of the scale.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen cancelled a Miss Cambodia beauty pageant in 2006, saying he would not allow such a contest until poverty in the nation was reduced by more than half.
I'm sorry to report that I was unable to find a graphic of a goat barfing to accompany this article.