Shame No. 1
Vietnam’s Ministry of Culture officials stripped 18-year-old Miss Vietnam Thi Thuy Dung Tran of the right to represent Vietnam at the Miss World contest in Johannesburg. Her crime? She didn’t complete high school.
Shame No. 2
On Feb. 13, just before Valentine’s Day, actress Bai Ling was arrested for shoplifting $16 worth of merchandise. Was it really worth it, Bai Ling?
Shame No. 3
Hong Kong heartthrob Edison Chen was involved in a photo sex scandal early in the year. Intimate photos of Chen with various women, including actresses Gillian Chung, Bobo Chan, and Cecilia Cheung exploded onto the Internet.
Shame No. 4
On July 1, MySpace celebrity Tila Tequila (birth name Thien Thanh Thi Nguyen) took another shot at love on a reality show that had straight men and lesbian females rying for the affections of bisexual Tequila. Too bad Kristy Morgan, Tequila’s pick for a mate, rejected her in the finale. Ouch.
Shame No. 5
Pictures of Miss Washington Elyse Umemoto drinking, pointing to a Playgirl magazine poster, and flipping off the camera surfaced early July. Umemoto, from Wagato in Eastern Washington, was also the second runner-up in the 2008 Miss America Pageant.
Shame No. 6
Spain’s Olympic basketball team participated in racist ads where they ‘slant’ their eyes with their fingers. Point guard Jose Manuel Calderon justifies the ads by saying that he thought the gestures were ‘affectionate’ and not at all racist. Whatever you say, Jose.
Shame No. 7
Miaoke Lin was brought in to lip-sync over Peiyi Yang’s singing of the Chinese national anthem during the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics on Aug. 8. Yang, 7, at the same time was apparently yanked from the ceremonies because she had crooked teeth.
Shame No. 8
On Dec. 16, an executive of Asia Television admitted that his channel had falsified viewer voting figures in a beauty contest. The Miss Asia pageant was won by a 23-year-old Hong Kong student named Eunis Yao after votes were counted from mobile telephone text messages and the Internet, but it has since emerged that she was not, in fact, the true choice of the people.
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