A Potential 'First'

It has been brought to my attention that, if Sarah Palin is elected in November, she will become the first vice president who ever won a beauty pageant.

Obviously, that has nothing to do with her qualifications (or lack thereof) to be a heartbeat away from the Oval Office.

But, for the record, Palin won the Miss Wasilla beauty pageant in 1984, which entitled her to compete for the title of Miss Alaska. She finished second and received a college scholarship.

Palin earned a degree in journalism from the University of Idaho (she was born in Idaho, but her family moved to Alaska when she was an infant), and she worked for awhile as a sports reporter.

She would have been about 20 when she competed for Miss Alaska, so I presume she was enrolled at the University of Idaho at the time that she won the Miss Wasilla beauty pageant.

And, while I know nothing of her family's financial situation at the time, it's possible that scholarship may have been what she needed to pay for the completion of her degree work.

She also worked for awhile in commercial fishing with her husband. I think that would be yet another first — we've had nearly four dozen vice presidents in our history, but I don't believe any of them ever worked as commercial fishermen.

Prior to her election as governor, Palin was elected mayor of Wasilla, the town where she was a beauty queen.

I found a picture of her from her beauty pageant days, and you can see it on the right.

Except for the absence of pigtails, doesn't she look like Mary Ann on "Gilligan's Island?"

Ginger or Mary Jane, er, Mary Ann?

Dawn Wells, the actress who played Mary Ann on the TV show Gilligan's Island (back when she was in her late 20s), got busted last October -- on her 69th birthday, as a matter of fact.

Wells, who now lives in Idaho, was pulled over by a Teton County sheriff's deputy, who reported finding unfinished joints in her vehicle and said in his report that he could "smell a strong odor of burning marijuana."

The case came to court recently, and Wells was sentenced to five days in jail, fined $410.50 and placed on probation -- after pleading guilty to one count of reckless driving.

Some members of the press (some of them are old enough that the old "Ginger or Mary Ann?" question is considered revealing of the preferences of men in their age range) are finding it difficult to believe that Wells could be guilty. She claims she isn't. She says the marijuana was left there by some hitchhikers she picked up.

Well, whatever the truth is, this isn't the first time Wells has been connected to something like this. Gilligan (Bob Denver) was arrested 10 years ago for having a parcel of marijuana delivered to his home. He originally said it came from Wells, but later refused to name her in court, blaming instead "some crazy fan." He pleaded no contest and received six months probation.

It would be nice if we could ask Denver a few questions, but we can't. He died in September 2005. Mary Ann, Ginger (Tina Louise) and the Professor (Russell Johnson) are the only surviving cast members.

Actually, it would be nice to know what the TV viewers who made Gilligan's Island a hit were smoking. It might exonerate Wells.

In the mid-1960s, America was beginning to get bogged down in Vietnam, yet, with all the men, materiel and money the government was committing to southeast Asia, there were literally hundreds, if not thousands, of viewers who wasted money and time calling "the authorities" to demand that the military be dispatched to the uncharted desert island to rescue those seven American castaways.

And this was with the knowledge (apparently) that one of the seven was a professor who could make a radio out of a coconut but couldn't patch a hole on a boat.