I wanted to write about the latest silly controversy that occupy Venezuelan minds but AML sent me that article in Investors Daily and most of the work is done for me.See, In Venezuela this week we are not discussing crime, Pudreval, the Colombian invasion, and what not. No, the two issues that are pressing us are 1) how come Miss Venezuela was not in the last 15 finalist of the Miss Universe competition last Sunday and 2) what did the outgoing Miss Universe meant when she waved a Venezuelan flag with 7 stars instead of the official 8 star flag. IBD does a great job of linking her silent protest (?) with the crime wave that kills us, literally. I just need to add a few precisions for those who might not get all of the story.
In Venezuela the biggest spectator sport is watching the Miss Venezuela and then, of course, the Miss Universe pageant. We are the country that won the most of them, and in addition we did made the unthinkable feat of winning it two years in a row, 2008 and 2009. It has been years I have lost interest in such competitions, joining my feminist friends long ago on that. But in Venezuela you cannot escape that as the front page of El Universal and El Nacional will let you know even if you do not want to know. No matter how hard I try to ignore it I end up reading about insider scoops that the Venezuelan candidate this year will be in the top 5, that she ate a quarter of toast with dry tuna for lunch, with 25 cc of skim milk for dessert, that she dropped her boyfriend to dedicate herself to the job, ........
This year the whole country got into a frenzy as to whether the candidate would be able to make the "triple corona", three Miss Universe crowns in a row (we have yet to hear of the alien candidates landing on earth but what kind of detail is that when Baseball holds world series with the US alone?). Even the candidate believed that she had a good shot at it. After all if Chavez can be president for life why should not Venezuela hold the crown of the Universe beauty for life?
Well, not only she lost, but she did not even make it into the final 15 Girls!!! Needless to say that Twitter went berserk in Venezuela and today all sort of opinions from Venezuelan celebrities appear in newspapers, including El Nacional (I learn that this old lecher of Donald Trump as the organizer gets to pick up 6 of the final 15).
But there was a story in the waiting to distract us from such a loss: the outgoing Miss Universe is from Venezuela, Stefania Fernandez. In her last catwalk in Vegas she decided to unfold a Venezuelan flag, not on protocol. But that was not all and in Venezuela we noticed that her flag had ONLY 7 stars instead of the official 8 (video here). Sure enough there are already chavistas accusing her of all sorts of conspiracy and the poor woman might want to think about it before coming back to Caracas. Certain things happen in Vegas that cannot stay in Vegas.
The thing is that even though there are some merits about considering adding a star to the Venezuelan flag, the problem is that it came form a personal decision of Chavez, or rather an imposition form him as when the news was announced many historians protested, justifiably. That was yet again a divisive move because during the 2002.2004 period chavismo had lost the flag to the opposition and by putting on it an eight start it became the chavista flag. Now, apparently, if you wave in public a seven star flag you could get into trouble.
This blogger of course will only own a 7 star flag because it is our historic flag, it was never meant to be an additive one like the US one, and because he cannot accept that such an important thing is not done through a national consensus, but done at the whim of an uncouth soldier. That is, if an all inclusive national group studies the arguments and decides we should go to eight stars I can accept that.
I guess I will end up in jail soon, from my flag, my blog or whatever.... Never mind that my blog spots only 7 stars in its logo....