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Nurses Association Turns Joy Behar Insult IntoOpportunity

Rather than letting a slight by Joy Behar get them down, the American Nurses Association found a way to turn a foot-in-mouth moment into an opportunity for nurses to show off their stethoscopes.

Ernie Smith

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Joy Behar and Michelle Collins learned an important lesson this week: Making fun of nurses is not a good idea.

The View hosts responded mockingly to the appearance of Miss Colorado Kelley Johnson, a registered nurse who discussed the importance of her work during the Miss America talent competition on Sunday.

“The talent, though, I have to say, the woman who won sang opera, and she was incredible. Really good,” Collins said of the monologue  (opens in a new tab). “But then there was a girl who wrote her own monologue and I was like ‘Turn the volume up, this is going be amazing, let’s listen.’ She came out in a nurse’s uniform and basically read her emails out loud and shockingly did not win.”

Behar responded quizzically, implying that Johnson was simply wearing a costume.

“Why does she have a doctor’s stethoscope on?” she asked.

Fun fact: Nurses use stethoscopes, too, something Behar was quickly reminded of by nurses responding to the show on social media. The American Nurses Association also stepped into the fray, launching a successful hashtag campaign, #NursesShareYourStethoscopes  (opens in a new tab). Thousands of nurses complied with the request.

“Nurses don’t wear costumes; they save lives,” the association’s president, Pamela F. Cipriano, said in a statement  (opens in a new tab).

Behar and Collins quickly found themselves on the defensive as a result of the comments. On Wednesday’s show, Behar was quick to apologize.

“I was looking at a Miss America tape, and there’s a woman wearing an outfit with a stethoscope, and I’m thinking is she in a costume?” Behar said, according to People  (opens in a new tab). “It’s not like I was trying to be funny. It was just stupid and inattentive. I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about.”

Collins told Entertainment Weekly that her comments, which were intended to be about the talent competition, were “misconstrued.”  (opens in a new tab)

The apologies met with mixed reviews on social media, but Cipriano welcomed the on-air apology.

“We are pleased that Behar apologized on the show this morning, and think this is a great opportunity for those in the media to highlight the important, lifesaving role of nurses and to show them the respect they deserve,” she said.

Joy Behar, the target of an online hashtag campaign led by the American Nurses Association. (Wikimedia Commons)

Ernie Smith

Ernie Smith is a former senior editor for Associations Now.

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Tags: #Leadership #media controversy #nurses #Public Relations

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