Beauty Is Not Intelligence

In the wise words of the Pet Shop Boys, "I've got the brains, you've got the looks, Let's make lots of money."

Never could these words have had such a profound relevance as this past weekend, when the Miss Teen USA pageant aired. I tuned in briefly to see the top ten finalists get named. I don't enjoy anything about beauty pageants. Not because they aren't politically correct, but because they are generally boring. My only motivation for watching is to see if I can correctly identify the winner before the judges announce it. This time I was VERY, VERY, VERY wrong.

As I watched the ten finalists take their place on one of the ten little highlighted circles at center stage, I picked South Carolina to win. In my defense, this was before I heard her speak.



So as you can tell from this video, she might have the looks, but definitely not the brains.

Aside from all of the stammering and misspoken words (which I've edited out of the following quote) caused, no doubt, by the stress of the event, her basic answer for why 20% of Americans can't find the United States on a world map was, "Our education in the US should help South Africa, Iraq and the Asian countries so we can build up our future."

Perhaps a position in military intelligence would fit her well. Think about it for a second. If she thinks that our education system, which has failed to train 20% of our citizens where our own country is on a map, then how confused can we make our potential enemies like China and Iraq. You put Miss South Carolina in charge of that task and we'll have China dropping nukes on Canada and Iraq flying planes into the Eiffel tower, and then reporting to their commanders "We've destroyed the United States."

The good side of this is that the winner was Hilary Cruz - Miss Colorado. I was glad to see she made the top 10, but didn't think she'd win it all. I guess that's why no one's ever called me to judge one of these contests.

Politics are Funny

All politics aside (this is not a political blog) I love a guy who can laugh at himself.
Whatever your political affiliation, I think you'll laugh at least once by watching this.





Thanks Mr. Goodpost for the link.

Because I Do Look Good

I've mentioned a couple of times recently about running for an elected office and made it pretty clear that it isn't going to happen. However, leave it to the creativity of our Music Pastor to come up with my campaign slogan if I ever change my mind.

Thanks Jared! If I ever run, I'm making you my campaign manager.

Politics And Politicians

Last night I watched Man of the Year with Robin Williams. I find him continually funny, the trailer made me laugh out loud, and I think politics can never be made fun of enough, so I was anxious to watch.

The movie was typical Robin Williams with the first half being non stop laughter and the second half more serious with a message. I give it a high entertainment value, but don't watch it if you can't laugh at what you politically believe in.

The movie made me stop and think about running for politics again. I've thought about it, and have had near random strangers tell me I should, but I just can't quite bring myself to agreeing that it's a good idea.

Then today, I went to our local Chamber of Commerce's city council debate. It was another confirmation that watching politics, and especially making fun of it is a great idea, but being a politician... not so great. So, I left the debate full from a great breakfast of eggs, sausage and fruit and reflected that while local politics are the most important and often easiest arena to get involved in, I'll stay involved with voting, but not active participation for now.

One thing I can't quite figure out is what my campaign slogan would be. One guy during the debate kept saying my name is... and I'm running for city council because I want change for the better. (YAWN) I'd need something catchy like, "My name is Matt Barrett. Vote for me and I'll give 20% of all my kick-backs to charity!" Think I need some help on that. Any ideas?

If the mood ever does strikes me, I did discover that I don't have what it takes to be a crooked politician... according to this anyway.