Priceless Memories - Bob Barker [73]
To his credit, George Honchar was scrambling to come up with a solution. One of the things I remember him saying during the dispute was “I’m not looking at throwing Bob’s number of years with this event out the window.”
I also remember that many of the contestants sympathized and respected my position on the fur coats. They were careful not to offend the pageant, but many of them were animal lovers and said that they supported my stand.
Finally, at the last hour, George Honchar arranged to use fantastic fake furs, though it took quite a bit of last-minute hustling to get them from an Albuquerque department store. We agreed that the women would wear fake mink and ermine furs in the ski lodge number, and I would fulfill my hosting duties. I would also announce as the women strolled by, “All of the ladies are wearing simulated furs.”
I was tremendously happy. I told George that animal rights groups across the country would hail him as a hero. He said that he had made the switch because he had no doubt that I was going to stick to my position, and he was right.
When asked by the press how he would handle the furriers, George said, “I’ll deal with them later.” He also said to me, “This would have been a hell of a way to end our association.”
I agreed that it would have been a terrible way to end our relationship. Sadly, my long, happy, and financially rewarding relationship with the pageants did indeed end the next year. As I noted, the pageant producers had agreed to no more furs in 1988, but they changed their minds.
I was surprised when I learned that they were going to continue to give away a fur coat. I pleaded with George Honchar once again: “Please don’t put me in that position.”
“It’s just a twelve-second plug at the end of the show, and you don’t even have to do it, a cohost will,” he said.
But there was no budging in either of us that year. I promptly resigned as host. By quitting, I was fulfilling a pledge I had made in the previous year’s controversy. In truth, it was all sort of anticlimactic compared to the year before. There was no last-minute standoff. There was none of the drama of the year before, though my resignation did gain quite a bit of media attention. “Fur Flap II,” it was called, and again it was a boon to the antifur campaign.
It was simply the culmination of my increased awareness and sensitivity to animal rights issues. I wasn’t bitter. I had done the pageant for twenty-one years. Certainly there was some sadness, but it was a matter of principle for me and a matter of business for the pageant. The Miss USA officials said that they respected my moral commitment, but theirs was a business decision. They had a long relationship with certain sponsors and advertisers, and they didn’t want to change that.
My mother couldn’t believe it. She was baffled that the pageant would rather lose me as a host than drop fur coats as a prize. Dear old mom. I’m glad that I helped raise awareness of animal cruelty in the production of fur products, and I’m glad that fur fashion has declined significantly in this country and around the world.
Of course, I continued to be active and vocal about animal rights issues long after those beauty pageant days. But I think that those two years were crucial moments in terms of raising public awareness. I realized that resigning from the pageants would be a sacrifice, but I really had no choice. The financial loss in no way compares to the importance of the issue with me.
The year I resigned, I was asked by protest groups to picket outside the pageant, but I did not want to do that. What concerned me was the possibility that I would be perceived as vindictive—involved in a feud with the officials of the pageant, which simply was not true. I did not want something I saw as a positive to come off as a negative.
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In November of 1988, I led the first of two protest marches