Don't Be Left Behind

On some level, you have to feel bad for Miss Teen South Carolina, Lauren Upton.

Two weeks ago, she was a 18-year-old living a relatively normal life. Now, she is the butt of jokes for many late night talk show hosts and forwarded inter-office emails.

"Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can't locate the U.S. on a world map. Why do you think this is?"

This simple question from last week's Miss Teen USA pageant will probably haunt the southern belle for years to come. Her now infamous response of awkward stammers, pauses, and Valley Girl-style phrases was a rambling, incoherent abortion of grammar usage and logical thinking.

She responds:

"I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uhmmm, some people out there in our nation don't have maps and uh, I believe that our, I, education like such as uh, South Africa, and uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should, uhhh, our education over here in the US should help the US, uh, should help South Africa, it should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future, for our children."

Now, it is understandable that she may not have heard or understood the question posed to her, she was nervous in front of the hundreds of people in the audience and watching at home, or is uncomfortable in public speaking. Of course, if any of these were true, Miss Upton certainly picked the wrong hobby to participate in. In fact, I will go to bat and say that sounds like a pretty odd question and I personally would like to see such "studies" that conclude that one-fifth of "U.S." Americans cannot locate their own country on a map.

However, what I find most frightening about this whole ordeal is the possibility (as demonstrated by Miss Upton) that young people now lack a very critical skill that should be fully ingrained into their impression minds at least once they reach high school: being able to bullshit. More so than proper sentence construction, isosceles triangles, or the periodic table, bullshitting is something that will be of great value to anyone over the age of six when faced with a question or problem that he or she does not know the first thing about, whether it be a personal, academic, or professional problem.

In my opinion, bullshitting is being able to spout out nonsense with confidence in hopes that whoever is asking will accept your fictitious answer and go away. Occasionally, you may be called on it but most are not confident enough in their intelligence to question an answer that may not make a lot of sense but is given with the confidence of an academic scholar.

In the future, this is something that Miss Teen South Carolina, as well as all young persons, need to work on to ensure their success in life. That is, of course if actually learning the appropriate material is out of the question.

Image © CBS

Follow up: Just like many of us thought, the question itself was bullshit.