It’s an OMG moment that reverberated around the world—literally. First time Miss Universe pageant host Steve Harvey announced the wrong name of the winner. Miss Colombia tearfully accepted her crown and flowers, and waved her country’s flag. Moments later a clearly somber Harvey returned to the stage to make a stunning announcement, “Let me take control of this. I made a mistake. It was a horrible mistake.” Harvey then held up the judges’ card with the real winner’s name —a clearly confused Miss Philippines, who seconds earlier thought she was the first runner up. Ouch!
I’ve watched that footage over and over. Drawn by the palpable double awkwardness. Upset for Miss Colombia who must have had to dig deep to be gracious in the moment while they took the crown off her head, and deeply embarrassed for Steve Harvey who, no doubt, has had his last shot at hosting the pageant. His oops moment immediately lit up the Internet with clever memes. Harvey can take comfort in the meme makers’ fleeting interest, but that won’t dim the spotlight on his humiliation. Because he is a well-known entertainer, his cringe worthy error is now consigned to pop culture history, forever a shorthand reference to him.
I knew watching Harvey that he was sweating from the heat of frying the egg on his face. Probably none of us will have to cope with quite as spectacular a public mess-up. But, it’s safe to say that any mistake, even one a much smaller scale, feels huge if you’re the one making it. In her book, Self Inflicted Wounds: Heartwarming Tales of Epic Humiliation, Aisha Tyler humorously recounts many incidents of massive mistakes. The comedian and host of The Talk, is brutally honest about her failures, some tales so embarrassing I shrank into my seat while reading. But Tyler wrote the book to share what she learned from her epic failures.
First and foremost pick yourself up.
Steve Harvey the wildly successful author, talk and game show host is in no danger of losing his livelihood. And he may even get more empathy than he would have because of his immediate move to blunt the impact on the two women most affected, “Please don’t hold it against the ladies, please don’t,” Harvey begged the onsite pageant crowd and the ten million viewers worldwide,” It is my mistake.”
Steve Harvey says nobody feels as bad as he does about his mistake. I’m gonna guess he didn’t check with the dethroned Miss Colombia.