One other thing, those aren’t “my quotes”. Those are quotes from President Bush over the last six years. I mean, if you want I can link to the location and date of the quote, or you can search them for yourself, but they’re not “my quotes” and it’s ironic that you’d make that kind of an accusation in the same sentence you’re accusing me of making things up to bolster a “sad” argument.

On the point of education, I couldn’t disagree with you more and don’t understand your logic that:

“stupid answer” equals “terrible schools”

while:

“smart answers/kids” DON’T equal “good schools”

I mean, either it is or it isn’t, and as I stated above, you can’t just cherry pick one teenage pageant contestants bad answer as absolute proof that “our schools are not great” and that she’s the epitome of a “poor education”.

As for who I singled out to make my argument, it happened to be what I was listening to in the car, and again, as I wrote above, I see as a thinly veiled attempt at faux outrage to sell copies of his book on the subject.

I’d also like to restate my original opinion on this, because as it so often happens, it’s been lost in the ensuing discussion. “Maybe she’s not the brightest 18 year old in the world, or maybe she was just nervous as hell about being on national television”

As for your analysis of who was making fun of her, it is interesting you picked a conservative. You couldn’t have picked on of the other hundreds of bloggers, radio hosts, or tv personalities both on the right and left. No you have to use a conservative, (even referring to him/they as the “right wing HATE machine.”) If you consider what Charlie Sykes said as mean, you obviously were not listening or reading other commentary on this girl. Also, I read the attached link, and I don’t see anything in there that refers to parents, teachers, or kids being morons. What I do see is a point being made that here is ANOTHER example of our school systems not properly educating our young people.

To point that out as an example of poor education is not necessarily a correlary to your great answers=great educational school systems logic, because that would be absurd (our school systems are not great, and it’s becoming more and more evident). This is not an isolated case of poor education, it’s just one more card on a deck of cases, and one that can and should be made, otherwise our school systems that are in dire need of a change of course, will never be fixed

And yes, lots of maybes and people making fun of her. I just pointed out one I thought was particularly over the top about it and using it to advance his own circumspect and tired ideology - “All schools are bad and parents, teachers, and kids are all morons.” - to sell more copies of his “book” on the subject.

So if one teenage girls terrible answer on the subject is a single indication of how “screwed up” our education system is, then all the great answers by other teenage pageant contestants are shining examples of how great our education system is, correct?

And that’s part of my point. It’s easy to take an isolated case like this and try to make it into the rule that proves a point. It’s also quite ridiculous.