By now, you've probably seen the video of Miss Teen South Carolina giving a pretty clumsy answer to a question in a beauty contest. Matter of fact, I don't know how you could have avoided it. We have a guy in the White House sending men and women off to war who gives equally incoherent answers to questions…but somehow, this eighteen year old woman who has no responsibility for anything (and no real job except to just look cute) gives a lunkheaded reply and it's Front Page News.
A dumb answer in the Miss Teen USA pageant? Wow, what are the odds of that? I'll bet all the other contestants were up there discoursing on the existential philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre in between the swimsuit competition and the parade of evening gowns. Come on, people. It's a beauty pageant, not a MENSA meeting. Give the lady a break. She got the important part of the pageant down. She looked great in the bikini.
While we're at it: For some reason, much of the press coverage (do a search if you don't believe me) described what we saw in that clip as a "meltdown." How is what she experienced a "meltdown?" Here's the definition of that word in the Free Online Dictionary…
1. Severe overheating of a nuclear reactor core, resulting in melting of the core and escape of radiation.
2. Informal. A disastrous or rapidly developing situation likened to the melting of a nuclear reactor core: "After several corporate meltdowns, only two reporters remain in [the] bureau" David Fitzpatrick."
3. Informal. An emotional breakdown.
Okay, there was no nuclear reactor involved in the incident, and I think it's a bit of a stretch to compare one dumb answer that harmed no one to a nuclear accident. She also didn't have any sort of breakdown in the clip. Maybe she had one afterward when she realized she'd become a national laughingstock but we didn't see one. Is the word "meltdown" becoming an all-purpose descriptor for any time something doesn't go right in public? Given its nuclear connection, maybe we oughta save it for something a bit more destructive than this.