Miss Teen South Carolina, Lauren Caitlin Upton, seems to be the internet joke of the week for her rambling, incoherent response to the token political question lobbed at contestants in this weekend’s beauty pageant. The blond beauty queen was asked to account for why, according to “recent polls,” one-fifth of Americans can’t locate their country on a world map.
For the sake of posterity, here is the transcript of her response, which I had already read on two websites and the video of which was forwarded to me by five different people before I finished my morning cup of Irish Breakfast tea:
“I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some… people out there in our nation don’t have maps and, uh, I believe that our, ah, education like such as in South Africa, and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should, uh, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., or should help South Africa, it should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future, for our children.”
Now, if the statistic is correct (and I would like that verified, comrades) then the odds are that at least nine of the other contestants would have fared just as poorly as Miss Teen South Carolina in naming a bunch of countries other than the U.S., which is to say nothing of the audience. Call me elitist, but I wager the kind of people who would spend their Friday night watching a sexless teenage beauty contest aren’t exactly our best and brightest. Could they find the U.S.A., or Iraq, South Africa or even one Asian country on a world map? And yet a question meant to highlight the collective stupidity of our nation was twisted into an easy “dumb blond joke.”
In Miss Teen South Carolina’s defense, what the hell would have been an appropriate response to this question? I mean, what would have been an appropriate response in the “I would wish for world peace, I believe the children are our future” world of beauty contests? Was she supposed to decry a property tax system of funding local school districts that produces woeful inequality between cities and suburbs? Denounce the high cost of tuition that leaves college out of reach for too many? Or was she supposed to crinkle up her nose, look slightly distressed and coo something about inspirational teachers?
I like to imagine an alternative scenario in which Ms. Upton really took the issue head-on:
I personally believe that Americans (or, I should say, U.S. Americans because our fellow North Americans in Canada are a bit more globally savvy) are unable to find our nation on a world map because of a conspiracy between our media and our government to keep us blissfully unaware of the world outside of our big screen high definition TVs, sport utility vehicles and McMansions, except when there’s a country that’s a “problem” that we have to “fix” or “help,” like such as Iraq or some of the Asian countries. If we knew, for example, that half the world’s population–three billion people!–live on less than two dollars a day while the 20% of us in the developed nations consume 86% of the world’s goods, well, we might not be so silent or complicit in the imperialist agenda of our government which supports our unsustainable lifestyle.
Something tells me if the blond beauty queen gave a response like that it would still be fodder for morning chat and gossip, albeit with a far different spin.