"Hannah Montana" and Big Lie Country

Essay contests should be illegal. They pretend to reward good writers, but in reality they don't care anything about the words you use. It's the subject matter that counts.

Unless you're really pitiful, you don't stand a chance.

A six-year-old girl proved this when she entered a contest to win Miley Cyrus concert tickets. Being an ordinary kid, she knew just scrawling down details about her life wouldn't do. The winning essay wouldn't be about how hard it was to style Barbie's plastic hair. No story about the difficulties of making a presentable cake in an Easy-Bake Oven.

She knew the winner would pull out the big guns, so she pulled out the big guns too. She started her essay with the line,"My daddy died in Iraq."

There was just a minor detail: he didn't. But the judges didn't check, and they declared her the winner. Later, though, some busybody investigated, and the next thing you know they took the tickets back.

Sure, she lied. But she claims nobody said the entries had to be true. Plus, I say the contest organizers lied as well. They didn't want an essay: they wanted sad facts. No matter how you phrase it, you're not going to win if the worst thing that happened to you was your Pomeranian puppy puked on the carpet. You know the winning entry isn't going to start like this:

To Whom It May Concern:

My Belching Belinda doll lost an eye this year.

Like big words and picturesque similes will help you beat that girl who rowed twenty-eight hours to get here from Taiwan.

Oddly, nobody's saying a word about the part of the prize the girl received: a makeover. Yes, a six-year-old girl got a makeover. That'll teach you values, when somebody grabs you out of first grade and says, girlfriend, we need to fix this shit up.

Personally, then, I'm all for lying in essay contests, because the whole thing stinks. Subjective judging actually means, "Match the values and win a prize!" We gays know we don't stand a chance. The winning entries are always a variation on, "We went on to get married, and sixty years later we've got eighty-three great-grandkids and I'm still the happiest man on earth!" We know we wouldn't get an Honorable Mention with "I went home with that dude, and forty years later we've got eight cats and a florist shop."

In the end the tickets were awarded to the second most pitiful entry. Still, there's a bright side to everything. The story made the headlines, and America's kids learned an important lesson. Now they know they'll have to prepare far in advance if they want to see their idols in person. They're going to run to dad with innocent looks on their faces. "Daddy," they'll squeal as they climb onto his lap, "is it true that only lily-livered cowards aren't enlisting and helping fight the terrorists in Iraq?"

Or they'll tug on dad's pant leg while they're wandering the mall. "Married life makes dudes look like pussies," they'll offer. "Don't you need a Harley if people are supposed to think you're a man?"

Or just relaxing at home, maybe they'll sense an opportunity. "I drank a whole glass of milk, all by myself. I'll bet you can't finish a quart of Smirnoff all at once."

And so the next time somebody offers Hannah Montana tickets, there will be even sadder stories. And, if the girls who write them are really, really lucky, they're all going to be true.