Miss Oklahoma

All right.  I admit it.  I watched about 20 minutes of the Miss U.S.A. pageant the other night.  I watched the "casual interviews" with the final 5 contestants and then (gasp) "the final question."

The hosts made a point of saying the ladies' answers to the final question didn't matter, and that what mattered was how they answered the question.  But, I gotta tell you, I think Miss Oklahoma lost the competition right there, based on her answer.  Because an entire panel of judges thought, "We cannot have a total airhead as Miss U.S.A."

Now, don't get me wrong.  I do feel some sort of sympathy for Miss Oklahoma.  She's clearly young, and clearly nervous, and someday she will look back on this piece of video and so totally not believe she said that.  In fact, I expect that when she returns to college, many of her friends (well, the good ones anyway) will gently mock her for this one for weeks to come.

So, here it is.  Each contestant is asked a single question (drawn at random).  They get softballs like, "If you could take one thing with you on your travels as Miss U.S.A., what would it be?"

Miss Oklahoma reaches her hand in the bin and draws out, "If you could have dinner with anyone in the world tonight, who would it be and what would you ask them?"

There are so many ways to go with that.  I mean, the question wasn't the standard "living or dead" thing, so she can't set up the dinner party with Abraham Lincoln and Albert Einstein.  But there are still a lot of options.  (Um, "I'd have dinner with Osama bin Laden and ask, 'Exactly where are you and all the other Al Qaeda higher-ups hiding?'")  She doesn't go for the funny.  She doesn't go for the political.  She doesn't go for an aging historical figure from whom she could learn something.  She doesn't even go for the easy one. ("I'd have dinner with the outgoing Miss U.S.A. and ask her for her advice for the journey I'm about to be taking.")

No.  Miss Oklahoma decides to use her one-time-only-dinner-companion-golden-ticket-on ...

Justin Timberlake.

And for the second part of the question?  "Maybe he can teach me some cool dance moves."

She could've had the ear of the George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, or Donald Rumsfeld.  She could've broken bread with Nelson Mandela or Salman Rushdie.  She could've picked the brains of Nobel Prize winners, breathtaking poets, or perceptive writers.  And, instead, she goes with the cute boy from N'Sync.

Yeah, yeah... the contestants' answers aren't supposed to matter.  But there comes a time when the judges (and the viewing public) think, "No.  I'm sorry.  You are simply too dim to represent the American standard of beauty."