The Miss Teen USA pageant was last night. While I don't object to the idea of eighteen-year-old girls prancing around a stage in bikinis and playing coquettishly with beach balls in principle (particularly when I'm getting paid to watch) things get awkward when they start, you know, talking. Or at least when one of them did.
Lauren Caitlin Upton (that's "Miss South Carolina" to you and me) was asked a fairly straightforward question for the contestant response segment; her implosion was so slow, so eloquent even, what with the ball gown and makeup, that I was ready to give her the award right there if only for the grace with which she managed to hold her composure, never dropping her smile, while any question as to her intelligence was rendered moot. I reproduce it here for the benefit of mankind.
Aimee Teegarden asks:
Recent polls have shown that a fifth of Americans can't locate the U.S. on a world map. Why do you think this is?
To which Ms. Upton rather spectacularly replied:
I personally believe..that U.S. Americans are unable to do so...because some...people out there in our nation don't have maps and I believe that our education like, such as...in South Africa and the Iraq, everywhere like, such as, and I believe that they should...our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., or should help South Africa, and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future.
She came in fourth out of fifty-one. There ain't no justice in the world.