My Dirty Little Secret

The reason I'm admitting that in a public forum is that I simply must vent about all the reasons this year's Daytime Emmy Awards show, which aired Sunday, stunk to high heaven.

First, only one award went the way I wanted it to -- Christian Leblanc, who plays Michael Baldwin on "The Young & the Restless," took home the statuette in the lead actor category.

He did some great stuff this past year, and I remember saying to myself at one point, "If this guy doesn't get nominated for an Emmy, I'll eat my shoe."

Secondly, my all-time favorite soap actress, Maura West (Carly Tenney, "As the World Turns"), didn't win in the lead actress category. She was beaten out by Susan Haskell from "One Life to Live" ... one of those stupid ABC soaps I don't care about.

I hate it when ABC soaps win stuff. For those of you who aren't in the know, those shows are "General Hospital," "One Life to Live" and "All My Children." They all look EXACTLY the same to me.

I was positive Van Hansis, who plays Luke Snyder on "As the World Turns," was a lock for the younger actor category.

Nope. Some guy from "Days of Our Lives," the only soap NBC still airs.

Whatever.

Then there was the "tribute" to "Guiding Light." It's the longest-running show in television history, and the last episode is set to air on Sept. 18.

The tribute was introduced by Betty White, who has nothing to do with "Guiding Light" and never has. She made a comedy sketch out of the intro.

The actual "tribute" was a horrible, disjointed montage of clips that jumped all over the place and didn't include many of the actors and actresses that had made the show great. It lasted about two seconds. Then the curtain came up, the announcer bellowed, "Ladies and gentleman, the cast of 'Guiding Light,'" and the camera stayed on them for half a second before the show cut to commercial.

What a slap in the face.

The biggest juke of the evening, however, was the winner for Outstanding Drama Series.

Three shows were nominated: "All My Children," "Days of Our Lives" and "The Bold and the Beautiful."

Now, I'm a CBS soap opera devotee. But I gotta call a spade a spade ... "The Bold and the Beautiful" is a lot of things. Like campy. Like over-the-top.

Outstanding?

No. In fact, I recently told my best friend that I considered "The Bold and the Beautiful" to be the place where bad soap actors go to die.

Imagine my surprise when it was announced as the evening's big winner.

Are you kidding me? The show has been recycling the same plot since its 1987 debut ... Ridge Forrister bouncing back and forth between two women at a time.

It's old.

All I'm saying is, it's a pretty sad awards show that has Kevin Clash winning for his performance as Elmo on "Sesame Street" as its highlight.