{"id":620,"date":"2007-09-03T20:58:24","date_gmt":"2007-09-03T20:58:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=620"},"modified":"2007-09-03T20:58:24","modified_gmt":"2007-09-03T20:58:24","slug":"aw-leave-miss-south-carolina-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=620","title":{"rendered":"Aw, Leave Miss South Carolina Be!"},"content":{"rendered":"

So if you’ve watched TV or been on the internets lately, you’ve seen the footage of Miss South Carolina give a rambling nonsensical answer<\/a> to the question, “Why can’t so many Americans find the USA on a map?” Whole lotta people have jumped in to mock and ridicule. It’s become an “internet sensation”. Heck, do we still have beauty pageants? What a bunch of ditzes those girls are!
\nBut I can’t join in on the mockery, because what I see isn’t a girl with a pea for a brain, but a girl completely blanking on a tricksy question in a high-pressure situation and just talking through it anyway. And I sympathise.
\nThat question is a hard one to answer. Put yourself in her shoes. You’re a contestant in a beauty pageant. You have to formulate, with not more than a second’s thinking time, a response to a politically dangerous query. Your response must at all costs avoid offending anyone, because this is a beauty pageant. You go to your training – open with one of your stock phrases while you try and figure out what else to say and how to say it – and *blam*. Your mind just goes blank. I’ve been there. Haven’t you ever been there? Hey, you’re on international TV and its the biggest moment of your life, no pressure!
\nShe blanks out. But she’s been training for this for years, and what does she do? She goes to her training. At all costs, keep talking. Do not shut up. Speak. Say something, anything at all. And so she does, and what comes out of her mouth is mostly nonsense, but hell, at least she went for it!
\nI mean, I’m not saying this girl is a genius and we must respect her enormous intelligence. All I’m saying is, cut her some slack, willya, mockers of the world? There were extenuating circumstances. (And heck, I for one think “Because many Americans don’t have maps” is actually a pretty savvy answer to the question.)
\nHer name’s Caitlin Upton, by the way, and she’s 17 years old.
\nSo, what say you, blogosphere? Am I just an old soft-hearted fool? Does Miss South Carolina deserve everything that’s coming at her? Is this just a bit of harmless fun?
\nAnd am I a hypocrite for all the times I’ve made an “O for Awesome”<\/a> crack?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So if you’ve watched TV or been on the internets lately, you’ve seen the footage of Miss South Carolina give a rambling nonsensical answer to the question, “Why can’t so many Americans find the USA on a map?” Whole lotta people have jumped in to mock and ridicule. It’s become an “internet sensation”. Heck, do … Continue reading Aw, Leave Miss South Carolina Be!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-620","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-a0","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}