The Miss USA Pageant and America’s “Dummy Map”

[waronignorance]

This year’s Miss USA contestants were asked whether evolution should be taught in schools. The Dummy Map tells us all we need to know about America ...

Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars posted a piece about the inanity of their answers, noting that most of the contestants considered evolution a “theory” that was on par with the creation myth in the Book of Genesis.

But (apparently with way too much time on my hands) I decided to dig deeper. I took notes on the answers of every one of the contestants to see whether there was more to learn here than just that the majority of the contestants saw evolution science and the creation myth as deserving of equal weight. After all, each one of these contestants had to be crowned Miss to get to the Miss USA pageant.

I theorized that contestants in certain states, to win their state titles, would have had to master the art of fake-Jesus code; how could one become “Miss Alabama,” for example, without prattling on about the Old Testament somewhere along the way?

My findings were startling. I’ll start with a map, which you might confuse with an electoral map representing states solidly Democratic, leaning Democratic, solidly Republican, or leaning Republican in a typical election year. Take a look at the shocking results ...

FULL Article:
http://beeryblog.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/the-miss-usa-pageant-and-americas-dummy-map/

[Obamanaut]

1. Are you now going to post all your old 'beeryblogs' here on DU? This one

is from June 30, an earlier one was several days old.

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. hmm...

[Union Scribe]

3. Awful lot of effort on such a flawed concept.

Let's see, beauty contests and elections, why of course, they're the same exact thing! And you can TOTALLY judge a state by a single teenage girl nervously prattling on stage. Makes perfect sense.

[Quantess]

4. I don't know...

there could be some connection.

[Fridays Child]

5. It's not about the beauty contest.

It's that the question they were asked was taken straight from the pages of the current culture war. So it's interesting, but not surprising, that their answers, by state, were at least somewhat reflective of the electoral map.

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. IIRC, Miss New Mexico was the one who said "Science is such a HUGE thing"

And I considered that one of the dumbest answers. So I'm not sure I would call that a dark blue state.