A Cup of Joe: A tale of two pageants – supplement

By Joe Nguyen, AsiaXpress.com

June 16, 2008

Last week, I wrote a piece entitled, “A tale of two pageants.” In it I wrote about the drama that transpired after Colorado Chinese News announced their pageant just two months after Asian Avenue magazine announced theirs.

Toward the end, I mention how the daughters of the two publishers should have worked together since both pageants shared the same mission.

What I failed to mention, however, was that Miss Asian American Colorado Chair Annie Guo did reach out to Miss Colorado Asian Pacific American’s Jocelyn Chao right after the announcement to see if they could collaborate. But Guo received no answer and thus Colorado was privilege to two Asian-American leadership and service pageants – one that followed through on its plans and is giving back to the community (Miss AACO), and one that turned into just another beauty and health competition.

My omission strongly altered the tone of piece. So, allow me reiterate my point.

The smart thing to do, *ahem* Jocelyn, would be to combine resources and collaborate to produce one big event that showcases the leadership and services of our young Asian-American women. The smart thing to do, *ahem* Jocelyn, would be for the two daughters of the two publishers, who worked hard putting their respective event together, to put aside the differences of their mothers and work together.

Annie tried.

For events touting unity in the community, it seems strange that someone would create a second pageant that directly competed against one that was already in place.

This isn’t the Olympics; competition does not promote unity in this case. Rather, it produced a dividing line.

The battleline that was drawn by members in our communities would never have been created if there was only one pageant. It was rare going to a meeting, event or festival where I didn’t overhear someone talking about the matter and having something negative to say about one of the two pageants.

I heard across the grapevines that folks from Miss CAPA were doing some less-than-honorable things such as tearing down opposing posters and even storming into The Denver Post office to complain about sharing a billing with Miss AACO in an article that promoted both events.

(I don’t know if they knew that the article was scheduled to run a week later and would have only featured the Miss AACO event until the writer asked to push the article forward to promote both.)

And these are things that were told to me on the record.

Sabotage is just childish. I heard tons of trash-talking from both sides, but I only heard of sabotage from one.

It seems strange that the Miss AACO committee, run by four college-age students, acted more civil and more mature than their older counterparts – staples of our community who should know better.

All this unnecessary drama could have been avoided.

All this unnecessary drama should have been avoided.

My apologies for any confusion on the matter.

Joe Nguyen is the editor in chief of AsiaXpress.com. Joe can be reached at joe (at) asiaxpress.com.