Kellie Pickler: Not Smarter Than a Fifth Grader

It's easy to assume that celebrities lack intelligence. After all, most of the time, we only see the entertainer - the actor, the singer, the athlete, the persona they choose to show in the glare of the paparazzi flash. Some celebrities will inevitably surprise us. Kris Kristofferson attended Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship and graduated with a master's degree in English literature. Jodie Foster attended Yale and graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor's degree in literature. Kellie Pickler appeared on a blockbuster primetime game show and admitted to the nation that she is not, in fact, smarter than a fifth grader.

Faced with questions most any fifth grader would know the answer to, Kellie Pickler struggled in every subject, save second grade foreign language where she was able to discern that the word bonjour is French because she met "a really cute French guy in the airport" who greeted her with the word in question. In the beginning, I personally thought maybe it was an act. I realized how wrong I was when Kellie deduced that a piccolo must be a member of the percussion family because piccolo, percussion, and Pickler all started with the letter "P."

As sad as that is, it was the next question that really made my head spin. Her question was, "Budapest is the capital of what European country?" She quickly responded by saying, "This might be a stupid question, but like, I thought Europe was a country. Budapest? I've never even heard of that. Like, I know they speak French there, don't they? Like, I want to say, is France a country?" She finally settled on the fact that Budapest was the capital of France. Luckily, there was a very intelligent fifth grader to help her out.

It got even worse when Ms. Pickler had to choose which man had been president - Johns Hopkins, Franklin Pierce, or Brigham Young. After talking through it, she chose Franklin Pierce, but only because her ears are pierced and Pierce has the same letters as Pickler, except of course the "K" and the "L."

Her appearance on Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader was beyond sad. It was tragic. I felt sorry for her in the end, not because she had to flunk out, but because she looked so forlorn when she had to admit her shortcomings. When all was said and done, she walked away with a lot more money than she deserved, but we can only hope she learned a lesson as well: Stick to looking pretty and singing songs about shoes - it may be the only way she'll earn any respect at all.