On Monday I seemed to upset a lot of people with my view of the Miss America pageant as a ridiculous event to exist in today's Las Vegas. And, I do not intend to back down from that opinion. The contest glorifies the sort of phoniness denounced by the character Holden Caulfield in 1951. This fake world of forced smiles has been ridiculed by so many others since then that the actual virtues proclaimed to emanate from Miss America are hardly anyone's idea of today's American woman, let alone representative about what is best about womanhood (does anyone even still say "womanhood"). I just don't see why this contest still exists. It measures what about women exactly in judging their worthiness for a college scholarship?

Still, my bigger gripe is not with Miss America, which will eventually -- like Criss Angel's "Believe" at Luxor -- die of its own irrelevance. In fact, I welcome the zombie existence Miss America now enjoys on cable as the pageant offers Vegas as its backdrop and this city needs all that exposure now. But this cable show, one of many set in Vegas, hardly marks a cultural rebirth for this contest. Again, what really interests me is why Miss America has come to Vegas when the values that Miss America ostensibly represents have nothing to do with the Strip in 2009. These are the hypocrites who pressured Vanessa Williams to give up her crown over years-old photos holding their contest in a casino that is about to launch a topless production, Peep Show, in March. Visitors to Las Vegas just don't care about Miss America at all. They also probably don't care about Holden Caulfield. That is another era. Today tourists are focused on Las Vegas in 2009 and not some rusty old institution that anoints a woman based on criteria from a time long forgotten.

That point was made in Norm Clarke's column. He notes that the cable show's ratings this year are expected to be up from last year in fact. But in Vegas his source reports the number of free seat fillers required to keep the 7,000 seat theater for Miss America looking crowded on television was in the thousands. I can confirm that leading up to the pageant, a free ticket e-mail service to which I subscribe was sending out blast after blast scouring for locals willing to sit through Miss America. That surely is a perfect signal of how little Las Vegas cares about Miss America.

Photo: Kirsten Haglund, Miss America 2008, crowns this year's winner, Katie Stam of Indiana. Credit: Miss America pageant.

The Miss America contest is stupid and dated and we crowned a new winner in Vegas on Saturday night.

One of the big surprises to me the last couple of years has been the relocation of the Miss America pageant to Vegas. Why would you bring this antiquated event -- an Atlantic City tradition that had seemingly run its course there -- to Vegas? Vegas aspires not only to be hipper than Atlantic City, but also wants to be a city with a relevance to the 21st century. (And anyway, swimsuit competitions made  much more sense near an ocean.)

Miss America is even sexist in a dated way; try comparing the contestants' stage outfits to the cocktail servers' uniforms at host resort Planet Hollywood. I know that Miss America is a scholarship organization, but there has to be a better way to grant money to young ladies to go to school. Besides, leading scholarship drives is not why Vegas hosts events.

Regardless, each year now the Miss America contestants descend on Vegas with their chaperons and rules out of another era.  Prospective Miss America contestants don't party, the winner this year thinks President Obama needs to quit smoking at once, and certainly the contestants don't drink or gamble, and generally their handlers speak rather condescendingly of all the major pastimes that keep the lights on in Vegas. So we promote Vegas with a contest that wants to project an image that has nothing to do with the business of Las Vegas?

Such contradictions go unnoticed here, as no one really listens to anything the Miss America contestants say, and they keep their answers as bland and user-friendly as possible.  Asked, in light of the Prince Harry scandal, if Miss America should be able to speak her mind, Miss California answered: "We absolutely should be allowed to express our views and our opinions. However we still need to make sure we have the integrity to respect other people's opinions and values as well." And, what does that mean?

Yet, 52 attractive young ladies still have a promotional value. The past week  found Miss America contestants appearing in so many places at Planet Hollywood you would think the pageant was a commercial for the resort. They were even stuck in sashes to watch the inauguration in front of tourists.

I have provided minimal coverage on the Buffet of Miss America in the years it has been in Vegas, including this year, and received not a single reader complaint. No one seems to care. Doug Elfman went to view the pageant for the Review-Journal this year and like me found it boring and lacking in any relevance. He wrote a funny story about it, too. Apparently, he also discovered they had to give away a lot of tickets to seat-fillers to keep the theater crowded. The women at nightclubs, I hear, are wearing more revealing outfits these days.

Photo: Kirsten Haglund, Miss America 2008, crowns this year's winner, Katie Stam of Indiana. Credit: Miss America pageant.