News: By now, you’ve probably seen the viral video of Miss South Carolina in the Teen USA pageant, in which she gets completely stumped by a question and is reduced to talking gibberish. The video has over 3.5 million views on YouTube (there are several other copies of it, so the total number of views is even higher). Just to put these numbers into perspective, the video of Miss South Carolina has generated far more views in 3 days than all of the videos of any presidential candidate has generated on YouTube in months. Here’s the video of Miss South Carolina with subtitles:
The video was aired on news stations around the country and on David Letterman last night–twice! Paul Schaeffer, a Canadian, said he enjoyed every second of it. Miss South Carolina, who is Lauren Caitlin Upton, will appear on the Today show today to explain what happened. To a local paper, she said, “”I wasn’t expecting [the question]. I lost my train of thought.” (More)
Analysis: In the grand scheme of things, I think this botched answer will help Lauren Caitlin Upton. Just look at all the media attention she has received! Ironically, no one is talking about the winner of the pageant. Ms. Upton is really marketable right now. She should capitalize on her 15 minutes of fame. For example, how about a commercial for Rand McNally or a GPS maker? Or even the iPhone, which, of course, has a map function.
My advice to Ms. Upton would be to just laugh off her botched answer. Trust me, I’ve seen law students and practicing lawyers “crash and burn” in answering questions during oral argument in pretty embarrassing ways. In fact, I’ll give Ms. Upton credit for delivering her answer so earnestly, without stopping like a deer in headlights, and even smiling at the end! That was a nice touch.
The good thing for Ms. Upton is that we’re only talking about a beauty pageant, not a multi-million dollar case with everything on the line for the client. Personally, I thought the question was pretty stupid itself.
August 28, 2007 at 2:17 pm |
Hopefully this video will be quickly overshadowed by the Youtube video of MLK Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Today is the 44th anniversary of the speech and personally, it would be refreshing to see that video on the main page of WordPress.com instead of that poor girl from South Carolina. Talk about needing more education, geez.
August 28, 2007 at 2:54 pm |
[...] 2.0: I have a further update posted here. I don’t think Miss South Carolina needs any sympathy — she’ll come out quite [...]
August 29, 2007 at 7:53 pm |
Please let her be Hillery Clinton’s running mate!
September 2, 2007 at 5:01 am |
She is smarter than you she can spell Hillary.
September 4, 2007 at 6:39 pm |
As usual, the media is only looking at a women’s looks and not her ability to respond to a simple question. The author of this colum should examine themselves and determine if this is the correct career for them. The media is suppose to tell the truth not just report what people want to hear or stories that sell so the writer can look good. Why not try to be different from the other individuals in your field. There’s an old saying that “the truth hurts”, also it doesn’t set to well with the ones being talked about.
February 1, 2009 at 4:45 pm |
I agree that this will give the attractive young lady a start in life. She couldn’t have garnered more attention in any other way. Go Lauren but start reading Time or watch a little more Discovery than your usual soapies….please!
Most Americans that I’ve met appreciate that the centre of the universe is not the USA. To those more ignorant; get an edukashun and visit South Africa sometime. We know that our country is …er…geee!…on the Southern tip of Africa and that our education system is now pretty good. We actually have world maps in school!
Laurens’ idea that WE need help is somewhat stereotyped.
Take a look within doll!