Mrs. Russia Steps Down over 'Mrs. Dumb' Interview Gaffes
Reigning Mrs. Russia, Inna Zhirkova, the wife of former Chelsea footballer Yuri Zhirkov, said Wednesday she was handing back her crown after millions watched an online video mocking her failure to answer basic questions such as whether the Earth revolves around the Sun.
The 23-year-old former model and mother of two in October 2012 won the Mrs Russia title, a contest for which only married women are eligible.
She is married to former Chelsea defender Zhirkov, who now plays for Anzhi, a cash-rich club based in Dagestan in the North Caucasus.
Russian state Channel One announced on Twitter that Zhirkova would renounce her title on Wednesday evening on its popular talk show "Let Them Talk."
"Inna Zhirkova will make a sensational statement and relinquish her crown," it said.
A source at the show confirmed to Agence France Presse that Zhirkova would make the announcement on the recorded show.
A video posted on YouTube earlier this month showed a state television journalist grilling Zhirkova on her general knowledge and life experience.
Asked whether the Earth revolves around the Sun or vice-versa, she became flustered.
"Probably it is the Sun. No, the Earth. I don't know," she said, giggling.
Asked whether she won the title thanks to her "erudition," Zhirkova, apparently not knowing the meaning of the word, agreed: "Yes, maybe, because I tried to look beautiful every day."
She also revealed she had never heard of two popular Soviet-era children's authors and did not know the composers of two works of popular classical music.
The camera zoomed in on her jeweled watch, as she said casually that "I haven't needed to work yet."
More than 4.7 million people have watched the YouTube video. It is viewable at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-sEWTWI5Uw
Commentators cruelly suggested her title should be "Mrs. Dumb".
Zhirkova told Komsomolskaya Pravda daily in a statement: "I am sincerely sorry that journalists could only find in all my intentions a niche to show off their oratorical skills and to expose the imperfections of our modelling business."
Life News tabloid website reported this week that Zhirkova failed to attend a Mrs. Moscow beauty contest due to depression at her humiliation.
26 April 2013, 13:58
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To say that the Earth orbits around the Sun is a practical approximation. It is more correct to say that Sun and Earth orbit around their common center of mass (some 500 km from Sun's center). This seems peanuts but in the case Sun vs. Jupiter the common center of mass lies 40,000 km outside Sun's perimeter. See the animation in the Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_of_mass
Taking practical approximations as absolute truth causes much harm (most isms are based on that) and therefore I propose the slogan "Back to Ptolemaism", to stay with residual complexity if that maintains the Human Individual at the center of valuation.
