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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Your attempt to induce gender-guilt isn't going to work with this guy.
I laughed my ass off at Miss South Ingnoramous because of the raging unintentional self-parody that was contained in the You Tube clip I saw. To give you just one example, I would laugh just as hard (and indeed have done so) if there was a similar clip of a male televangelist who went batshit crazy and revealed himself to be a total fool while trying to separate the faithful from their hard earned cash. (Oral Roberts comes to mind.) Oh, and I wouldn't listen to anyone who was telling me I was mocking religion doing so either.
It's the pure comedy of the moment and the ability to take the stuffing out of these self-important blowhards that I tresure, not the gender of the idiot in question. You seem to acknowledge as much at the end of your piece, which really does seem to undercut your own argument Rebecca.
Besides, in the immortal words of Homer Simpson: "It's funny because it's true!"
...is the perfect final bit of evidence needed to get rid of beauty pageants forever. Our celebrity culture awards pretty young women (and men) enough for abject moron-ness; we don't need any more help.
If Mario Lopez had responded:
Miss South Carolina, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
From Billy Madison http://imdb.com/title/tt0112508/quotes
The reason it was so funny has nothing to do with pageants or women or anything. Can you blame a total lack of knowledge of English grammar on nervousness? It's like she forgot how to be fluent in her native language. Like her brain had a corrupted file in it and needed to be rebooted. That's funny no matter who is saying it, unless the person has some weird aphasia.
"Third runner-up. That's out of 50 states plus the District of Columbia, folks. Upton was deemed to be among the top 10 percent of her peers."
I think that as it usually works in the Miss USA, Miss Teen USA, Miss Universe franchise, only the five finalists are asked interview questions. Thus, Miss Teen South Carolina was the top 5 prettiest (or whatever you want to call it) of the contestants, but not all of the contestants were given the "opportunity" to demonstrate their public speaking skills during the broadcasted portion of the contest. Thus, it is really the fourth runner up who should feel the worst, not the 46 other contestants who were beat out by Miss Teen South Carolina.
P.S. I kind of felt bad for her at first, but the clip gets funnier and funnier each time you watch it. (Have you *seen* the version with subtitles?) Personally, it's the beauty pageant aspect that makes the whole thing funny to me. Ordinary, non-public-attention seeking dumb people aren't nearly as funny.
When I first saw the clip, I immediately cringed and thought, "Oh poor baby!" I have also become a jumble of nerves and confusion when standing in front of people trying to appear articulate and well-informed, so my original instinct wasn't to laugh, but to empathize. Obviously, I was in the minority. I knew the clip would be popular, but I was shocked how much people made fun of her. It's just plain cruel.
Also, how come no one's talked about the awful-ness of the question? If someone asked me why Americans couldn't find the U.S. on the map, I would shrug and say, "I don't know. 'Cause they're stupid?" Not very articulate or well-informed.
Anyway, thanks Rebecca for summing it up nicely.
It's just nonsensical. The words do not flow together in any way that seems to mean anything, right or wrong. Obviously, the girl was nervous and simply blurted out a bunch of nonsense. I suspect we've all had this happen at some point. I know I have. Sometimes, when we're nervous, we stammer out half-formed ideas instead of composing a rational statement. Then we look back at what we just said and think to ourselves "that made no sense, and I just blew this job interview" or whatever high-pressure situation we were in. Fortunately, most of us don't have our gaffe publicized around the world and repeated on youtube for days.
I suspect at least part of this is simply jealousy. People saying "Well, she may be beautiful, but look how dumb she is". It feeds a deep need we all have to look down on privileged people. Regardless, I'm not going to fell too sorry for her. I'm reserving my sympathy for all of the girls who nailed the interview question, but didn't win 3rd place because they didn't look as good in a swimsuit as Ms. Upton. Or, better yet, I'll feel sorry for all of the girls who will never have the same opportunities as any of the contestants simply because nature has not gifted them with faces and bodies that are considered beautiful by society's standards.
What I'd like to know is why she chose to list these countries specifically. Did she just recall the names of all the countries she had memorized for her other answers?
Then I clicked over to see her picture. That's when I became "leeringly empathetic". Whew! Thanks, Rebecca, I didn't realize there was a name for this phenomena.
We know that our President has used "the Internets" and has spoken of being familiar with "the Google."
Can he find "the Iraq" on a map?
You have to give Upton points for more-or-less maintaining her sang froid as she delivers her utterly incoherent jumble of an answer. I give her credit for not breaking down completely, as could have happened.
There is a moment in the video, just a brief moment, that many others have commented on, where you can see that she has some dim understanding of the trouble she's in, but she sails right through that moment, and gives her answer, however chaotic, and even finishes with a clause that makes a bit of sense "for our future, and our children."
I actually think she gave her variation on the notorious "world peace" gag in Miss Congeniality. If you parse her answer, if that's even possible, there's a distinct flavor of "world peace" in there somewhere.
Finally, it's worth noting that a number of my friends suggest that she had memorized answers to various questions, and between not quite absorbing the actual question she was asked, and being a little nervous, it seems quite plausible that she launched into one answer that was a kind of response to the question...then shifted to a different answer entirely, for a question not asked, and managed to make a complete dog's breakfast out of the thing.
I, and everyone I know, who saw this, were not so much inclined to be cruel about it, as we were flabbergasted that someone who clearly must have spent a great deal of time in the public eye (surely she's been in pageants like this from the time she was little, you can't GET that far in a major pageant any other way), could foul up her moment so completely.
It suggests a certain lack. I'm not sure what that lack is, but she's missing something.
I thought the whole thing was quite salutary. We wonder how people like GW Bush get elected? They get elected by people like Upton, multiplied by millions, whose thought processes, are, as a day-to-day matter, equally dim and confused.
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