Sitting down to a “grown up” dinner Monday night, I was quite surprised when our conversation morphed into a discussion about beauty queens – specifically the reigning Miss USA.

Typically, talk topics between me and mine are quite diverse, and I’m sure that fellow diners often overhear us and think, “What in the world are they talking about?” Work, the merits of audio books over hardbacks and such, and even sometimes, yes, we gossip.

And outside of that brief flick of “Toddlers and Tiaras” across the television screen one night and a few derogatory comments about 4-year-old in makeup, I’m pretty sure that we have never talked about beauty queens – at least not in depth.

It started like this.

“That other girl was robbed,” he said.

Since he’s a cop, it took me a moment to shift my brain from how Church’s gave me the wrong order to the conversation at hand.

“Huh?” I said.

“That pageant girl – Miss Okalahoma or whatever. She was sandbagged with that question.”

His opinion, like many others, was runner-up Morgan Woodlard, a.k.a. Miss Okalahoma, was intentionally given a question that would put her in an unfavorable light with the judges.

The subject – immigration.

In fact, when Woodlard was asked for her views on Arizona’s recent immigration law, the question drew boos from the crowd before the emcee could even finish it.

When the emcee finished the question, which asked whether immigration enforcement “should be mandated by the state or by the federal government,” Woolard said that she was “a huge believer in states’ rights…I think it’s perfectly fine for Arizona to create that law, and I’m against illegal immigration. But I’m also against racial profiling, so I see both sides in this issue.”

Internet reports say Fox & Friends host Gretchen Carlson (herself a former Miss America) suggested that perhaps Woolard’s conservative-leaning ‘informed opinion’ was enough for the judges to exercise political correctness and award the crown to (Miss Michigan Rima) Fakin over a blonde from Oklahoma.”

Fakin, you see, is a Lebanese-American immigrant, and possibly the first contestant of Muslim background to win.

I’ll give Fakin props – she’s real purty, as the ol’ timers would say, but I would have to agree that her onstage question answer was a bit lacking – I mean she didn’t even know what a controlled substance was.

So, I gave the quickest, wittiest reply I could think of – “I just thought beauty queens weren’t supposed to trip.”