Miss America and Limbaugh: Beauty and the beast

THE NEWS THAT Rush Limbaugh will be a judge of the 2010 Miss America pageant completes the circle of a declining event in desperate need of an audience. If Rush, a world-class sexist, can't help revive an "American sweetheart" contest, then the words of the former host, Bert Parks, ("There she is, Miss America") will finally stop troubling my memory. Although the contestants over the years competed with no more than a bathing suit and, say, a decent recital of Chopsticks on a grand piano, the young curvaceous women and their sponsors continue to insist it is something much more than a skin contest, which we all know is fibbing.

Art McMaster, the president and CEO of the Miss America Organization, showed little restraint in hailing his new panelist, exhaling: "We are thrilled to have Rush join us for our pageant this year. He will be bring a thrilling new dimension to the competition..." He said some other things, but you can easily guess that he was thrilled beyond any reasonable doubt. After all, the ennobling mission of the pageant was expressed back in the 1920s by an Atlantic City Chamber of Commerce guy who was looking stir up more business in town:

"Miss America represents the highest ideals. She is a real combination of beauty, grace and intelligence, artistic and refined. She is a type which the American girl might well emulate."

Rush fits the description perfectly, wouldn't you say? Even McMaster's bit about dimension. FemiNazis need not apply.