Bess Myerson died recently. The new stories about her said she was the first Jewish Miss America. They didn’t explain why.
If a Man From Mars visited Earth, he might come up with these possible reasons:
- Jews aren’t pretty enough.
- Jewish culture prohibits women from entering pageants.
- Jews hadn’t heard of Miss America.
If he possessed special powers of insight, he might get closer to the truth and say: Jews don’t become Miss America because some people don’t like them.
While the Man from Mars might say this, the many obituaries on Miss Myers did not.
Scarlett Johansson
This defies the journalistic tenet to never leave questions unanswered. Reporters sometimes even explain things most people know, like who O.J. was, or that Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK. But when reporting on “firsts,” they avoid the truth. Maybe they just don’t know how to say it.
The stories almost always include a sort of wink and nod or a code that we all are supposed to understand — mainly that certain groups of people receive unfair, unjust, discriminatory treatment, which makes awards and honors difficult.
I did see one article that tried going deeper into the “why” of Bess Myerson. Writing in the Daily Beast, Emily Shire said:
Kat Dennings
“What perhaps affected people more on a day-to-day basis were the pervasive anti-Semitic stereotypes that Jews were cheap, weak, big-nosed, swarthy, and ugly little creatures.”
But she considers other reasons as well, saying that Jews make up only about 2 percent of the adult U.S. population and statistically are long shots. She also suggests that the Jewish-American emphasis on education and intellectualism could be keeping Jewish women off the runway.
Still, she points out that there are scores of Jewish beauties in Hollywood, which ain’t Harvard. She mentions Mila Kunis, Natalie Portman and Rashida Jones. She could also have included Alison
Natalie Portman
Brie, Kat Dennings and Scarlett Johansson. There are so many web pages devoted to “hot and sexy” Jews that it’s hard to believe they comprise only 2 percent of the population. At the bottom of this post is a video on Playboy magazine’s top picks.
It could be argued that the strong Jewish influence in the movie industry permits bombshell Jewesses to become stars, while the Miss America pageant is without a similar tradition of semi-inclusiveness.
Alison Brie
It’s a shame we can’t talk about such things and get to the heart of them.
Shortly after Bess Myerson died, Edward W. Brooke III passed away. His obituary said that in 1966 he became the first African-American popularly elected to the United States Senate. It didn’t say why.
But I think we all know the reason. Cheers to us.
By Lanny Morgnanesi
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