[sugar and spice]

I think people are being unnecessarily tough on New York. She has a lovely voice; she just chose a song that didn't show it off to the best of its abilities. But in my book, that's a much smarter move than pushing way beyond your limitations a la Tennessee.

She wasn't the best talent, obviously, but she was far from the worst. The dancers were all pretty atrocious this year--the barefoot ballet/lyrical stuff is basically the equivalent of admitting you have no real talent, and the girl on pointe was awful even by Miss America's dance standards. And don't get me started on Tennessee. I'd put New York's talent about smack in the middle.

The real complaints seems to stem from the fact that she did a low-brow routine relatively well instead of the usual doing a high-brow routine poorly, which . . . seems like a weird complaint in an event where Miss Ohio's spectacular but low-brow talent was clearly the best of the night.