“There She Is, Miss America . . .” 0

The pageant is tonight. I just realized that when I read the paper.

(Since the paper is the Philadelphia Inquirer, and since Delaware is 15 miles from Philadephia, no mention of Miss Delaware is made, of course, though Miss New Jersey gets a mention, even though Delaware is closer to Pennsylvania than New Jersey. And Wilmington is closer to Philadelphia than Allentown, Pa., or Trenton, New Jersey. But, for all that the Inquirer is one of the country’s three or four best papers, it doesn’t realize that Delaware exists. But that’s another story.)

Anyhoo, no, I’m not planning to watch the pageant. I’ve got more important things to do, like sleep. Even though it is a real snoozer, I prefer real snoozes.

This year it comes from Vegas and will appear on CMT. It got tired of Atlantic City, and, apparently, AC got tired of it.

Las Vegas would appear the right place.

Face it, it’s a beauty contest. All the posturing of the Miss America organization can’t change that. They can pretend it’s something else, and attempts to pretend it’s a scholarship competition have turned the pageant sponsors into pretzels.

Back when I was young (sometime between the invention of the Model T and the Chevy Camaro–real cars don’t wear bowties), the newspapers would actually publish the winners’ measurements the next day.

Now, you can argue that that is a crass and sexist act that dehumanizes women and turns them into objects. It may be–I’m not getting into that discussion one way or another.

But I will argue this: A beauty pageant that tries to pretend it’s about anything other than looks is an exercise in hypocrisy.

In attempting to survive as a commercial endeavor while also attempting to pretend it’s fundamentally about something other than looks, the Miss America pageant has pretzeled itself into hypocrisy. And by doing so, they have lost market share.

Now they are in Lost Wages, Nevada, which trades quite honestly in flesh.

Maybe they will take a lesson from their host city and be honest and stop pretending they are about anything other than pretty young ladies.

Then, again, maybe they will continue to act like Bushies hypocrites.