There...she goes

ABC has announced that it is dropping the Miss America Pageant after 50 years. The last pageant was viewed by a relatively small television audience of 9.8 million people, which undoubtedly accounts for the decision.

One has to ask, though, what the hell were almost 10 million people doing watching this sexist drivel in the first place? This nauseous cavalcade of parade-wavers with vaseline-polished dentals should have gone out in the 70's, but America just won't give up its image of the "perfect" woman--a creature who doesn't exist, and it's a good thing, if the Miss America ideal is supposed to be the role model.

And speaking of sexism, even a stopped clock--well, you know the old quotation. In this case, the stoppped clock is none other than the relentlessly vicious Karen Hughes, and it pains me to agree with her about anything.

In a moment of really bad memory, Teresa Heinz Kerry remarked that she didn't know if Laura Bush had ever had a "real job." Laura Bush has a master's degree in library science and worked for many years as both a librarian and a teacher. After Heinz Kerry apologized, the First Lady responded graciously, through her spokesman, that it was no big deal and she knows what it's like to give a lot of interviews--stuff happens.

Hughes was quick to point out, however, that even if Bush had never worked in a library or a classroom, Heinz Kerry's remark denigrated the First Lady's job as a mother and homemaker. I agree. How sickening it is to hear men say "My wife doesn't work," or to hear people say to a woman surrounded by her children, "Do you work?" It' s no less insulting if Heinz Kerry says it, and it's just another subtle example of the chronic internalized sexism we all share.

Of course, Hughes is the spokeswoman for the aggressively anti-feminist Bush, so any statements she makes about the dignity of women comprise overwhelming hypocrisy.