Miss USA, NASCAR style

NBC has begun promoting its coverage of this year's Miss USA competition — set to be broadcast live Friday from Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas — as though it were a car race in which anyone could crash and burn.

"Anything can happen!"

A commercial* that aired this weekend emphasized the event's unpredictability with a clip of Last year's Miss USA winner, Rachel Smith, as she fell on her rump during the Miss Universe competition. But the centerpiece of the spot was a sound bite from last year's Miss South Carolina, Caitlin Upton [see inset], now infamous for becoming horribly tongue-tied during her Miss Teen USA performance (That's TEEN, as in, like, teenager, dude, OMG, WTF, ROFLMAO!).

Mean-spirited? Superficial? Shallow? Yeah, whatever. Executive producer Phil Gurin explained it all in an April 1 New York Daily News story that, apparently, was no joke: "See it live and you can be the one to tell your friends to go to YouTube."

"Our emphasis this year is not only do we have beautiful girls and two great American icons hosting [Donny and Marie], but we do want to let people know that anything can happen," said executive producer Phil Gurin. "When we did Miss Teen last summer and [Upton] said what she said, YouTube had like 25 million hits. That's just a ridiculous amount. So we're saying to people, 'See it live and you can be the one to tell your friends to go to YouTube.'"

Beautiful. Er, I mean ... That's hot.

* UPDATE: Finally found an online copy of it. Jezebel.com has the commercial, and makes some like observations.