You probably missed Friday's broadcast of the Miss Teen USA pageant. But if you have e-mail or Web access, you have probably since seen one of the ignored pageant's most downloaded moments: Miss Teen South Carolina's verbal meltdown.

To view it online, see www.youtube.com/

watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww.)

Semi-finalist Miss Teen South Carolina Lauren Caitlin Upton's cyber-infamous answer to why a fifth of the Americans asked to locate the United States on a world map couldn't do it:

"I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some … people out there in our nation don't have maps and uh, I believe that our, ah, education like such as in South Africa, and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should, uh, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., or 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."

What a shock; she didn't win (although pageant host Mario Lopez deserves some sort of award for heroically holding back his laughter).

What's interesting is not that a pretty blonde teen totally lost her composure on national television and blathered a lot of nonsense. Heck, anyone who watches TV is used to that.

It's that Miss Upton, 18, has become on the blogosphere a new kind of media sensation: The inarticulate symbol of derision; a kind of anti-celebrity. According to an Associated Press report Monday, "one clip logged more than 2.6 million hits and 11,000 comments in just three days." She's scheduled to this morning's "Today" show.

Liberals see her as the failure of the Bush administration's single-mined focus on the war in Iraq at the expense of domestic programs. Conservatives see her as a symbol of the failures of the public education system.

Parents tend to have some pity for her, and so do public speakers. We know, for instance, that her real trouble began after she said realized in mid-sentence that she'd just said "U.S. Americans." Being little older than a kid, she panicked, and then just started babbling. It happens to the best public speakers - even the people who live by linguistics. To illustrate, name the famous public speakers who said the following:

1. "A zebra does not change its spots."

2. "You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test."

3. "If Lincoln was alive today, he'd roll over in his grave."

4. "I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false is guilty of falsehood, and the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him."

Aside from being funny (or just confused and strange), the above quotes prove how easy it is to stumble along the treacherous verbal path between idea and elocution.

This doesn't prove that Ms. Upton is smarter than she sounded, but it does vindicate the findings of so many pollsters who maintain that people fear public speaking more than they fear death.

Judging by the furor over one teenager's public flub, there's reason to be afraid - very afraid.

By the way, the answers are 1. Al Gore,

2. George Bush, 3. Gerald Ford and 4. Abraham Lincoln.