I feel sorry for Steve Harvey, a very talented comedian and — as you can see if you ever catch him on the current incarnation of Family Feud — a pretty good game show host. As you've probably heard, last night in emceeing the Miss Universe beauty pageant, he identified the wrong lady as the winner and then had to go out and correct the error in a very awkward, cringe-inducing moment.
To his credit, Mr. Harvey took full responsibility for the mix-up and displayed the card he'd been handed which had the names right. Some sources are saying today that what happened was this: The decision was both on the card and on a TelePrompter and it was wrong on the latter, which is where he read it from. Either way, it still looked awful — especially because Miss Colombia, who had just been erroneously crowned, was standing there looking stunned and hurt and baffled throughout. Someone came over, took the crown off her head and then placed it on the actual winner, Miss Philippines.
Everyone understands mistakes get made and it seems to me Harvey is taking the full rap when he's maybe more deserving of about half. The minute he said the wrong thing, others on the premises knew it and no one immediately stopped the celebration and crowning of the wrong woman.
I believe the Academy Awards telecast is always on guard for someone reading the wrong name and has a planned procedure to halt the proceedings before the wrong "winner" gets up to the stage and launches into their acceptance speech. In live TV, you can't be expected to anticipate everything that can go wrong but you can cover a few obvious possibilities, this being one of them.
Of course, what would have been wonderful is if Miss Colombia had not looked so hurt and had instead taken the crown off her own head, turned around and personally put it on Miss Philippines and congratulated her. Today, everyone would be saying that was the height of classiness and that Miss Colombia had won the night in that regard. But it was all so confusing and wrenching up on that stage, you can't fault the miscrowned runner-up for not thinking to do that. Some people think she should have crowned Steve Harvey.
And of course, people are saying that it all proves that pageants like Miss Universe are stupid and irrelevant — and while I believe they are, I don't think this proves that. The rest of the show probably proved that but this didn't. Alas, what the screw-up will prove to some people is that it's dangerous to do Live TV and that everything should be recorded in advance so editing is possible. I hope it doesn't convince anyone of that but it probably will.