I'm getting a little tired of reading or seeing initial stories about people where we are manipulated to feel sympathy for them. Sympathy is nice if deserved, but if the facts can be passed on we can make a determination as to if a person truly needs our sympathy or tough love.

Let me pass on a few examples of this. There was a story about a San Antonio girl, Domonique Ramirez, who was crowned in a beauty pageant. According to Ramirez, she was told her weight gain was too much and if she didn't, and this is what she said a pageant official told her, 'didn't lay off the tacos,' she would lose her crown. Sure enough, she lost her crown and she sued to get it back. She went on a number of morning talk shows pleading her case, and from her point of view it was really sympathetic. Apparently when you do a human interest story, news organizations would rather get the exclusive and not the truth, because as she told her story, more information came out that didn't put things in a good light. The pageant officials said that in her contract it stated she had to maintain a certain weight, but there were other reasons for her dismissal. She was said to have been last for some appearances and her boyfriend accompanied her on a few occasions. Ramirez didn't necessarily deny the allegations, but tried to put a positive spin on it. In my eyes, that seemed to suggest she did do things that were against pageant policy. Supposedly she did a photo shoot representing herself as the pageant winner without getting permission from the pageant officials.

The last straw seemed to be a discussion between the head pageant official and the mother. According to Ramirez the conversation was 'heated' as in it wasn't too bad just a bunch of people having a slight disagreement on the issues. While the pageant official did give a statement, it was clearly obvious the conversation just wasn’t 'heated.' All though a number of conversations the girl had, she talked about how much the pageant was going to help with her education. The mother had a stance that was righteously right, which is never good when you want to show sympathy. As far as the weight issue, the pageant officials produced the contract which, no matter if you like it or not, did show they had a clause where she had to maintain the same weight she had when she won the competition and it was initialed by the mother and daughter. The girl admitted she had gained some weight, but again that word 'some' might be in dispute because it looked like she gained maybe 10 pounds. On her frame it wasn't fat but considering the rules they agreed to, she violated them after numerous warnings.

The court case ended with the girl losing.

A similar case happened when a pageant winner was removed of her crown because risque pictures and promotions she did for another beauty contest she won. She had the tears and the story of how she was naive and that the pictures weren't that bad. Again, from the initial story, it seemed like this well respected woman hadn't done anything too bad and because it was a human interest story, the reporters didn't do a lot of digging. Well, a simple Google search revealed the contest with the risque pictures was for an adult video awards contest. Now, giving her credit, her award didn't have her do nudity, which you might expect from a adult award, but there were not only pictures but video of her being interviewed and it was very suggestive. She went on to promote the contest for a year, appearing at radio stations and, this is what I suspect would have been the photos in question, had pictures taken of her topless with body paint with different radio stations logos on her chest. This was, of course, video taped and placed on YouTube.

I agree stories like this don't impact our lives, but the lack of giving full information can make us question the honesty of people. There was a story this morning about cyberbullying. It was another story about teenage girls making up a slut list and passing it around. They showed some of the girls not knowing why they are on the list, outraged mothers wanting something to be done. I was struck by one girl; an 18 year old with two kids (yes two kids) who couldn't understand why she was placed on the list. As she talked, a lot more information came out that made me think her innocent tale wasn't so innocent. There was the obvious evidence of her having two kids by different guys by the time she was 18. It took a lot for me to suppress my cynicism, because I'm thinking if you have one child by a non caring guy, mistakes can happen. When you have a second child, by another loser guy who doesn't stick around, while it might be cruel to think it and say it, people are going to wonder what you are thinking having a second child. She talked about other girls from her neighborhood that she had problems with in junior high, but she says things are OK with them now. That would lead to the question who would have posted something on her? Like I said, it is probably not best to question the victim but when information that might not be flattering is parceled out, people are going to wonder.