Defining Intelligence 139 The premise here is that she isn’t actually stupid but was just con- fused by the moment and that she is intelligent because she is on the honor roll at school, can explain lunar eclipses, and could answer the original question coherently, given sufficient time to do it (and maybe with some help). The media, for reasons of their own, decided to make this a feel- good story and get people to feel better about Miss South Carolina. She has continued to work in the media in various ways since the original interview. I am not concerned here with Miss South Carolina’s intelligence, but with what it means to be seen as being intelligent. My premise is that while native intelligence is certainly genetic, the perception of intelligence and what might be described as intelligent behavior can be altered. (Perhaps this seems as incoherent a position as Miss South Carolina’s position on education.) The curious thing about her second response is that it doesn’t answer the original question at all. The question was about why she thought Americans were ignorant about geography, and she respond- ed by saying that they weren’t but that maybe there should be more education about reading maps, which in no way addresses the ques- tion about why Americans can’t locate the United States on a map. So her answer is still awful even after she was given time to work on it. It is simply unintelligent. The question is: Could we make Miss South Carolina more intel- ligent somehow? Clearly school hasn’t done it. (She was an honor student!) How might one do it? Of course, we really aren’t concerned with Miss South Carolina in particular. Consider the following interviews conducted at a Sarah Palin book signing in November 2009, in Columbus, Ohio. The interviewees were all in line waiting to meet Sarah Palin and to buy her book: Interviewer: Tell us why you are here today. Older woman: She stands for what America is. Interviewer: What do you mean by that? Older w