Well, oops!
Following their snarky nurse comments earlier in the week, the women of The View find their show ending the week with two fewer sponsors than it began. Technically, the two sponsors are "pausing" their adds, which makes sense. Both make far too many products that are marketed to the show's female-heavy demographic to stay away forever, but at least one of them markets a lot of medical supplies and certainly wants its nurse customers to know it stands by them.
But the pause suggests to View network ABC that the sponsors were not pleased with the comments or the rather watered-down apology that followed the next day. Joy Behar, who had questioned why Miss Colorado contestant Kelley Johnson was wearing a "doctor's stethoscope" with her "nurse's costume," said she was not paying attention to what was being talked about. Co-host Michelle Collins had mocked Johnson's monologue about her care of an Alzheimer's patient named Joe as "reading her e-mails" and the next day said that the View hosts loved nurses -- she had been talking about the talent competition and was "misconstrued." Moderator Whoopi Goldberg told those who had been offended that they needed to listen better. "You have to pay attention," she said, indicating that she probably hadn't been.
For the nurses' part, their national association has accepted the apology, probably realizing that protracting this matter could start to look petty and vindictive on its part. Individual nurses have responded in a variety of ways, judging by articles and blog entries my Facebook list has been linking to.
To move to an opinion that carries little weight, I think the sponsors and the nurses association have the right idea. The women on The View said something stupid and mildly insulting considering the intellectual throw-weight of the source and venue. This was pointed out to them and they issued what passes for an apology from a media celebrity these days. The sponsors have shown they don't much care for this kind of carelessness but aren't planning on modeling their behavior on irritated toddlers (who don't read, so I'm safe). The national nurses association has done the same.
And those of us who are wont to get a snicker when vacuous celebrities trip over their own feet have had a couple. I'm ready to move on, not needing to pay more attention to this matter because of a deep and abiding faith that they will do it again.
2 comments:
This just seems bizarre to me, that the women on The View wouldn't understand nurses wear and use stethoscopes - the nurses at my GP do, the nurse at my gyn is the one who listens to my heart and lungs and who takes my blood pressure "the old fashioned way" (with a sphyngiomanomenter and stethoscope).
Maybe the women on the View only ever see doctors, because they're famous?
Then again: if I see a woman in scrubs and with a stethoscope, I make no assumptions, because all the doctors I currently go to happen to be women.
I think the whole thing started because Michelle Collins, whom I read is a comedienne, wanted to make fun of Kelley Johnson's "talent" of her monologue, since it didn't fit the pageant talent stereotype. From there, I think Joy Behar was just customarily dim and also thought she could bag on pageant contestants but didn't think about how her words might be heard by nurses everywhere.
Then it magnified because the women of The View make lots of noise about feminism and supporting women, but here they were mocking a female-heavy profession as well as seeming to confirm gender stereotypes of female nurses and male doctors. And it went on even more because they don't have the grace to admit they actually screwed up or the fortitude to brazen it out and say, "We made some jokes, you didn't like them, let's all move on."
Whatever her faults, Barbara Walters was a pioneer for women in journalism and I can't imagine this is what she really wanted to leave behind as her legacy when she finally hung up the gig.
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