This Friday, no fewer than 1,300 movie theaters will offer the premiere of "Showgirls," a tale of a topless Vegas lap dancer that is the first Hollywood movie with an NC-17 rating to go into such wide national release.
Miss America, anyone?If you ask me, this year's pageant couldn't have arrived a moment too soon. And couldn't have had a happier ending. Not because the prize went to Miss Oklahoma but because a nation of voters rose up and gave a rousing endorsement to the endangered swimsuit competition.
Nearly a million Americans had voted, and a landslide 79 percent of them voted for flesh. United we stand, America, indeed.
Well, not quite united. Though I and my two sons cast our votes for swimsuits, my wife did not. She argued on behalf of every woman who ever resented a bathing suit that Miss America is, after all, a competition for a scholarship, and that surely the contestants should be judged on their talent and intelligence, not their behinds.
We argued that the Miss America wannabes know what they're getting into - the pageant is held on a burlesque ramp before hundreds of leering high-rollers in Atlantic City, after all - and that if the contestants were all so brilliant or talented they'd either be earning grants from bona fide academic institutions, if not the Citadel, or starring in a road company of "Cats."
This debate may never end.
My own view remains that every hour my sons spend contemplating the pinup erotica of their father's misspent youth is another hour away from the ubiquitous culture of Calvin Klein and "Showgirls," not to mention the pedophiles on line.
Frank Rich
New York Times News Service