You know---I've had several Miss Teen South Carolina moments in my life..

[trumad]

OK--- maybe not quite as bad--- but my career in telecommunications has required me to give presentations and answer questions in front of large groups of people----and there have been a couple of times that I've walked out of those meetings uttering to myself, WTF did I just say?

You get nervous and sometimes try to wing an answer to a question you just don't have the answer for----- and you end up sounding like a complete ditz. I've learned over the years to wiggle out of situations like that before the brain-fart kicks in, but I gotta admit....I've had a few.

Now for Miss Teen, SC... I suspect she's a bit dense and it wasn't a brain-fart... but still, I feel kind of sorry for her.

[kurth]

1. She's just a kid

She'll make somebody a good wife. Heck, she might be the next CBS anchor.

[tanyev]

3. They might need one pretty soon. Did Katie make it back from Iraq yet?

[AlinPA]

4. or CNN, MSNBC,Fox.

[flobee1]

2. I would like to see how she answered other questions

that would be pretty telling


The only other thing that bothers me, is that its an opinion question.
right or wrong, all of us have an opinion on that matter

Either she was so nervous with millions watching (completely understandable)
or she's part of the "dumbing down" problem
which was the subject of the question

[trumad]

6. I suspect the dumbing down part.

Like I said, I sense she is a bit dense... which makes her winging it even more painful.

[Rowdyboy]

5. I spoke briefly (and disjointedly) at a wake for a dear friend last Thursday

When the pressure's on and you're already an emotional wreck, its easy for words to come out all wrong. Poor kid.

[Dirty Hippie]

7. I'll never forget

the time when I was in 7th grade and I was asked to read a passage from our English text.

Something like "It is important to use the correct pronunciation ..."

I pronounced it pro-NOUNCE-ci-ation.

The entire class erupted in laughter.

My cheeks still burn!

[pacalo]

9. Ahh...must be something about 7th grade.

My 7th grade class had an assignment to write the ending for a half-written story about a boy in school. My story was about his becoming a hero during a school football game. We had to stand in front of the class to read our stories. Here's the part that had the class rolling with laughter:

"He's running for the 50-yard line, the 60, the 70, the 80...touchdown!"

Yikes!

[Sukie1941]

8. Beauty pageants are sickening anyway

I hope all of them stay off the air. These girls start young like Jon Benet Ramsey, are heavily promoted mainly in the south, and these girls are groomed for stupidity, in my opinion.

After awhile the young women all look alike on stage.

[H2O Man]

10. Huge issue here.

I'm not sure if our party will get the traction on it that the republicans might.

[bridgit]

11. i thought she was cute acting all big & grown-up & all, they taught her some of the...

connector jargon i.e. "such as", it just didn't connect to anything, the poor dear; i don't wish her any ill-will, if she can survive herself she'll likely do just fine

[H2O Man]

12. Her error

will enhance her career far more than had she given an answer that feigned insight.

[bridgit]

14. sure, no-less than weather girl caliber straight out of the box so long as she can...

wave/roll blustery clouds past a blue screen montage of goat judging, clogging, Andean flute musicians and a toothless corn-dog eating kid at the county fair :thumbsup:

[Ravy]

13. Once, in a history class spelling bee...

I was asked to spell "Declaration of Independence".

While burning at the unfairness of having TWO difficult words, and focusing my award winning spelling capabilities, I started:

D-E-C-L-A-R-A-T-I-O-N O-V I-N-D....*ding*

[Missy M]

15. That's funny....

in defense of the error, I am pretty good at spelling but when it comes to the letters f and v I always have to stop a moment and think. Don't know why, it is a mental block with me.

[emmadoggy]

16. Here's a link

to a video and story about her appearance on the Today show after the hoopla.

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20053504,00.html

She still comes off as pretty ditzy to me but I can definitely empathize with what happened to her. However, part of competing in these pageants is that you are supposed to be "poised" and "collected" and able to put your words together to talk about issues. In that regard, she still failed. But I do feel bad for how she's been made a laughing-stock over this. In the video of the pageant question, she definitely had that sort of glazed over, deer-in-the-headlights kind of look on her face. Like her brain just disengaged and words just started tumbling from her mouth. But at the same time, you can tell that she was trying to SOUND like she knew what she was saying with her sad little "and such as like that" comments.

I have sympathy for her embarrassment, but I'm not 100% convinced she really knew the right answer anyway (despite her answer on the Today show - she had time to think about it or have someone give her the appropriate response before the show.) And she certainly seems the type that I could see on Jay Leno's Jaywalking segments being totally clueless.


edited to add my own "public embarrassment" story.....I have my AAS in radio/tv broadcasting :eyes:. I attended a small technical school where the local PBS affiliate operated from within the technical school thereby allowing the broadcasting students to get some hands on experience by working on some aspects of the PBS station. One of the things we did was to produce and broadcast our own "newscast" twice a week. They were short - 15 minutes one day, 20 minutes the other and they were definitely small potatoes - mostly community info or just short blips that we got off the AP wire. Anyway, for each newscast the teacher assigned each student a "job position". One time you would have to anchor, the next you might be the director or producer or technical director or camera operator etc. One day when I was anchoring, there was a short community info blip about a snowmobile group having an event. They were called the Sno-drifters. However, when the story was typed up for the teleprompter, it was typed as Snodrifters.
As I'm doing my own deer-in-the-headlights, glazed over, just-get-the-words-out bit I read the blip..."The Austin Snodrifters...". You know, SNOD-drifters. And this is over the airwaves to the public. Oh yes, I caught quite a bit of crap from my classmates about that one!!