Erika Harold, Miss America 2003, is a Republican delegate from Illinois. She arrived in New York with a message, but it's not a message to capitalize on the beauty of body or voice. She spent the year she wore the crown talking to teenagers about sexual abstinence before marriage and the perils of alcohol and drugs.
This is a little heavy for Hollywood. The twinklies would have squirmed uncomfortably the other night when a choir of delegates at Madison Square Garden spontaneously joined with Daniel Rodriguez, the singing policeman, in the final verses of "Amazing Grace."
The actor Ron Silver doesn't make the hearts of teenagers of all ages go aflutter like the sight of Ben Affleck or Leonardo DiCaprio, who celebrated with John Kerry in Boston, but he warmed the hearts of the seriously concerned with his speech welcoming the delegates to his hometown, explaining how and why he sees the world differently from his liberal colleagues.
"Even though I am a well-recognized liberal on many issues confronting our society today," he told them, "I find it ironic that many human rights advocates and outspoken members of my own entertainment community are often on the front lines to protest repression, for which I applaud them, but they are usually the first ones to oppose any use of force to take care of these horrors that they catalogue repeatedly."
He compared the murder of 2,605 of his New York neighbors at the World Trade Center as a defining moment for the future of freedom and democracy, and reprised the benediction spoken by Douglas MacArthur at the ceremonies concluding World War II aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay:
"It is my earnest hope - indeed the hope of all mankind - that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past, a world found upon faith and understanding, a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance and justice."