The Presidential Pageant
"There He Is, Mr. America..."
Less than two weeks before Election Day 2004, the ABC television network
cancelled Miss America. Fifty years after it premiered on national TV,
the famous "beauty pageant" has fallen on hard times. Last month, the
annual show drew just 9.8 million viewers, the smallest audience ever.
"The pageant has changed, but not for the better," commented an
editorial in a New Jersey newspaper, the Asbury Park Press.
"Eliminating most of the talent portion of the competition from this
year's broadcast was a mistake. Trotting the contestants out in string
bikinis rather than one-piece suits probably did more to alienate
traditional viewers than attract new ones."
Despite this year's modernizing make-over, the Miss America pageant is a
throwback to the 1950s, the decade that launched it onto the nation's TV
screens--an era when sexism seemed inseparable from Americanism. Women
were reduced to competitors in bathing suits who could sing and flash
their shiny white teeth while they briefly made conversation. Perhaps
subtly but pervasively, the spectacle was an exercise in humiliation.
These days, we shouldn't burn a lot of calories patting ourselves on the
back. In 2004, television routinely features a steady flow of rigid
gender roles--as a close look at an array of commercials attests--and the
use of women's bodies to sell products is standard media operating
procedure.
Throughout our society, there are plenty more options for women today,
professionally and personally. But the media images of females are still
heavily slanted by stereotypes. Meanwhile, in the workaday world, women
receive just 76 cents for every dollar paid to men for comparable jobs.
We have a long way to go before there can be any credible claims of
social equality.
As reflected in the viewer ratings, the concept of Miss America has gone
out of fashion. In contrast, the networks devote countless hours to
covering what we might call the Mr. America pageant--also known as the
presidential campaign.
While this country has become a good deal more skeptical about the
mythic allures of Miss America, the news media and the nation as a whole
are still boxed in by the Mr. America extravaganza. During thousands of
public appearances, presidential candidates pose, preen and posture,
trying to measure up to our images of what and who the man in the Oval
Office should be. And the media evaluations often seem scarcely more
sophisticated or discerning than the retrograde judges who assign points
according to arbitrary standards of physical proportions and womanly
poise.
They're polar opposites--an inconsequential Miss America contest and a
momentous presidential contest--yet political journalists, especially the
ones on television, often lapse into reviewing debate performances and
stump speeches on the basis of little more than style. Reporters and
pundits are apt to applaud well-executed spin without reference to the
factual basis or wisdom of the assertions.
We may scoff at the imagery of Miss America, with her regal cape and
glittering crown. And it will certainly be a step forward if the pageant
can't find a major network next year to air the retro show.
But for half a century, few people had reason to care exactly who became
Miss America. Ever since the 1950s, however, each battle to win the
presidency has been more about television than the one before. Candidate
performances in front of TV cameras--and how journalists characterize
those appearances--have assumed ever-greater importance in the nation's
presidential selection process.
Ordinarily, as a practical matter, the game of political drama merely
requires that someone play a passable version of a wise president on
television. What we see on the screen are the pretenses of a man who
tries to follow a script written to fit the public's fondest image of
Mr. America. The gaps between televised appearances and real-world
realities have never been more profound than the abyss between George W.
Bush's favorite televised personas and the consequences of his
presidential reign. It may soon be this president's misfortune that most
voters have seen through the poses of a pleasant TV performer.
Norman Solomon is co-author, with Reese Erlich, of "Target Iraq: What
the News Media Didn't Tell You." His columns and other writings can be
found at www.normansolomon.com .
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