Tradition

I don’t like the thought of sounding like a grouch often (especially since lessening negativity is one of my goals at work), but Robomarkov encouraged me to do so, so flame him if you think I’m whining.

I just shut off the annual Miss America Pageant -- or is it still annual? In an attempt to increase their audience, they have changed most of the aspects surrounding the pageant (if not the pageant itself). Obviously, it is no longer held in September. Apparently, they have abandoned Atlantic City, NJ for the other casino city: Las Vegas, NV. The pageant was shown, not on one of the three major TV networks, but on CMT (originally named Country Music Television, but since this program was on, I’m guessing that CMT shows about as many music videos as MTV does nowadays. Yeah, remember "Music Television"?). Finally, they encouraged viewers to participate in the voting by using their cellular phones. Let’s see: change when it’s on and what network it’s on and hope that people will remember it exists and watch. The only reason I found it was because I put on my local programming channel to see if anything good is on TV any more.

As I said, the pageant itself appeared about the same. I missed the talent, evening wear, and platform portions (give me a break; I had a Pinky & the Brain DVD to watch), but the swimsuit competition survived. Mario Lopez was this year’s host (you might remember him from such cultural, classic hits certain to go down in history like Saved by the Bell and Pet Star). Thankfully, he didn’t sing. They played a recording of Bert Parks’ rendition of the theme.

I'm glad that the swimsuit competition remains, although, being a knee-jerk moderate and traditional fence-sitter, I can understand both arguments about the presence of the swimsuit competition. On the one hand, if you’re looking for someone intelligent, talented, and caring, why should her body matter? (Obviously, based on some of this year’s contestants, prettiness certainly wasn’t a factor in their selection.) On the other hand, can you really select an ideal, well-rounded representative of American womanhood if she’s, well, rounded?