This wasn't her first "stressful" pagent!

She had to have won numerous pagents before and also won Miss Teen South Carolina. Which meant that she had to get up and answer stupid questions many times before.

The way I see it she had memorized a set of answers, screwed up her reciting and got all tounge tied when she realized none of her preset memorized answers were really going to fit that question.

Talking about Iraq and Asia and South Africa have nothing at all to do with why American's couldn't find the USA on a map and she did indeed hear the question when part of her answer was about geography education, personally i find it egregious that her cover was to lie about how she didn't hear the question instead of just say, yeah I messed up, you can thank me for the laughs!

I do agree with the poster who noted that part of the laughter is because she's blonde, gorgeous and will have many things handed to her because of her looks. That attractiveness can get you far in life as can being a driven male. Also, very attractive women even if broke, can marry the richest guys because of her looks. Denise Richards, Jessica Simpson, Jessica Alba don't have acting careers because they're such thesbians, they have them because they are super super good looking and sexual looking. And I think plenty of women are pissy that a woman will get all kinds of notice and things just because she's blonde and men get pissy because many of them become helpless in the face of a great looking blonde woman. Once I wore a blonde wig just to see what happened and I started to get hit on twice as much even though the only thing different was my hair color.

I noticed it in my own office, a very attractive blonde woman started working here and the women would find whatever they could to ridicule her, how she was only working to land a husband, she was dumb(when I got no such impression) and the men would find any reason they could to talk to her and help out and sometimes do her work for her, I sat near her so I would hear what went on in her cube. Plus i think she liked using her looks to get ahead because she quit when her manager wouldn't give her a raise and a promotion because he told her she wasn't qualified enough and hadn't been working for the company long enough, as in less than a year.

So I do think people do like it when powerful people get knocked on their ass, isn't that what our whole tabloid industry is about?

Though I do not think a suicide attempt is the same as a jail sentence! Owen Wilson was on anti-depressants, he has a disease that almost killed him. Martha Stewart was greedy and got caught, Paris Hilton was driving drunk when she's got plenty of money at her disposal to hire sober drivers. So of course people are going to have more sympathy for a person with depression than people who break the law! I didn't notice a ton of sympathy for Roberty Downy Jr or Gary Busey.

I think it's a much larger condemnation of the latest perversion of the 'American Society' where people morn the jailing of 'pop tart' Paris Hilton and want to be 'just like Lindsay' and cook their brains with the best that Madison Avenue and the corporate enhanced boob tube has to offer.

We ARE a nation of ignorant and intolerant ignoramuses and here's a bit if news: The rest of the world knows it.

As Peter Gabriel said in the intro his song 'The Barry Williams Show' in concert a few years ago, 'people used to think they are what they eat, or they are what they wear or what they drive. I believe we are what we watch.'

Ahhh, the glow of a corporate America. Full of Shiny Happy (and ignorant) People...

Her panic is obvious. Our revulsion of the perversion of our once valued educational system that now seeks to label evolution a theory and religious superstition as fact and the shift of schools from public institutions that are answerable to the public to educational factories that turn out 'test takers' rather than sentient human beings with inquisitive minds should be evident, like political leadership from the opposition party...

Oh, that's right. I'm not.

So, I take it that you've never been caught in one of those great moments where you just KNOW that your foot just went to the right, and not the left, like the choreography demands, you're starting that high note just a skoosh sharp, or you've forgetting what the hell you rehearsed before you went out to speak because you're so nervous (pardon the world's worst run-on sentence).

If you haven't, you should try it. It's fun to make a fool of yourself, and to let yourself down when something is important to you.

I don't care that this girl is a red-stater, and perhaps a Rethug. I don't care that she's beautiful. What I care about is that she was performing, messed up, and is probably kicking herself for it. That feeling absolutely stinks.

It's also highly sad and amusing to see so many sad sacks on here projecting the ills of the world onto this girl. I try not to say this much, but I really do believe that many of you are "Jus' jellus!" of her looks and opportunities. Yeah, some people are really bloody lucky to get chances that you never will for different reasons. Different gifts have different curses, trust me. I'm also a beautiful woman, and you'd be amazed at the shit people come up with. However, pretty people aren't supposed to ever hurt. We should be grateful to society for its forbearance, right? Right.

In other words, have your laugh, because it IS funny, and I'm sure that she's going to laugh once the sting wears off...but don't turn it into a self-masturbatory opportunity. Plus, you may not want to cast stones at glass houses. We none of us are perfect, after all.