and I still maintain that it was a stupid question FOR A BEAUTY PAGEANT! It is not a stupid question in and of itself.

One poster claimed that she was supposed to answer to the implications. No, don't think so. The questioner said, "why do you think this is?" The question seemed to be asking WHY 20% of Americans cannot identify their country on a map, to which I still say that not many people would have any real answer to this, only opinions based on nothing unless they knew a lot more about American education (and the retention of education) than the average teenager.

By the way, the question said 1/5 of Americans, not just students. Does this 1/5 include the very elderly with memory problems? People who lived more than half their lives before Alaska and Hawaii became states? Or any person with memory problems due to injury or disease? (They don't exactly glow in the dark). Does it include functionally illiterate people? What was the age cap? Was the cutoff 18? 16? 14? 12? Did it include students who go to such crappy schools that they are mainly taught to the myriad of state tests they have to pass just to graduate?

I still think the contestant's answer was more an indication of her lack of poise and an inability to think on her feet, than her intelligence. The former ARE important for a pageant contestant, and she flunked miserably. And, yeah, it was funny.

I can't help being reminded of the derision heaped on Miss USA for the all-too-human sin of slipping and falling at the Miss Universe pageant in Mexico City in late May.

The Mainstream Media largely misreported that she was booed only after her fall, when in fact she had been harassed every time she showed her face in public for weeks prior to the finals, for no other reason than her national origin. At the finals, the organizers had to call in extra security for fear the hostile mob might storm the stage. It's hardly surprising that under all that stress a moment's loss of focus might lead to a slip and fall.

She was denounced then in hateful posts by bloggers such as Wonkette as "stupid", although as a young lady of color and a magna cum laude graduate of a highly regarded college she hardly fits the usual stereotype.

The video was shown an astonishing number of times on cable TV, leading to this outburst from Chris Matthews: "I think MSNBC ran this 4,000 times today. Let's not us do it again. Can we stop this joke? Let's stop now. Let's stop doing that picture. Somebody seems to get a kick out of that, somebody who doesn't like women or something." I think Matthews has spotted the elephant in the room that no one wants to mention.

Dozens of copies of her spill were posted on YouTube, receiving millions of hits. Some of the copies were re-mixes with derisive sound effects, showing the impact repeatedly to suggest sexual intercourse. Many of the comments were sexually suggestive. The fact of the matter is that the public humiliation of an attractive woman is a turn-on to many men, and the run-away popularity of this clip can only be explained in these terms.

Since May, Rachel Smith has been an exemplary Miss USA. Unlike her predecessor, she has not done drugs or been involved in public scandal. Perhaps she has been stupid, because she HAS been totally ignored by the media, while Tara Connor, Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Miss Teen South Carolina have been made into celebrities by the media.

ousteroune,

Thanks for the pointed and cogent analysis of why the elephant in the room here is clearly misogyny. People keep coming up with excuses for all the other things that might be the source of laughter at Miss Teen South Carolina's blunder. But those arguments just have to ignore the vast vast majority of the actual explicit comments (both written and in video responses) out there on the internet.

I am puzzled why none of the several comments here that make this point eloquently are not marked as Editor's Choices. This obvious point of view seems to be entirely excluded from th Editor's Choice comments.

heheh so she gave an answer which ain't exactly worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize. But so what? It's the title of Miss Teen USA she's competing for, so to me hey - an answer is an answer, however hilarious it may be.

Same thing whenever a mike gets shoved in front of a hockey player along with the most difficult questions on earth for the sweaty, out-of-breath player to somehow form an answer to. They give pretty idiotic answers too.

Same thing.

I'm probably not the only one here who has spent an inordinate amount of time laughing at the moronic things that come out the mouth of George W Bush (or Dan Quayle). They're on youtube. It's not gender based hatred. Stupid people saying stupid things are funny.

And by the way, shame on Ms. Traister's editors for letting that last line through. It was just about unreadable.

...I'd agree more if you found a "stupid/silly broad comment" made by the same people who don't like silly comments. See, the internet is a pretty large place. You can find an upswell of any sentiment you like. All the same, it's very disingenuous to take comments form a bunch of idiots on YouTube and then attribute it to your average Salon reader.

I wasn't talking about Salon Readers. I was talking about the vast (over 14 million views) popular reception of this video. That reception I think is almost entirely misogynistic. My only objection to Salon readers are to those comments here which defend the humor people find in this video as being sympathetic or about something other than misogyny and prejudice against southerners. That may be true for a few people, but pretending that those sort of responses have anything to do with the meteroric rise in popularity of the Miss Teen video requires ignoring (or having no knowledge of) what most people out there in the rest of the world are saying.

It's an enormous understatement to dismiss the misogyny and prejudice as just what a "bunch" of people on YouTube think. That is the popular reception. That's where millions upon millions of people are going. There are tens of thousands of comments on this video at YouTube (whereas here there are only over a hundred). Look at what people are saying at YouTube, Digg, Reddit. Do a google news search and look at how most news sources are covering this. No one is hiding that they are laughing at someone who they believe in unfathomably stupid. People are mocking her, in droves, for being a dumb woman and a dumb southerner. They mock her hair color. They mock her accent. That's what tens of thousands of people are saying.

Salon readers are I think in no way representative of the popular reception of this video and it is a mistake, if one wants to understand how this video became one of the single most popular videos in YouTube's history in less than a week, to take Salon readers as an example.