Christiane Amanpour and the Quest for the Jewish Egg

Abstract

Feminist Studies 41, no. 3. © 2015 by Sayantani DasGupta 651 Sayantani DasGupta Christiane Amanpour and the Quest for the Jewish Egg Whoever adds one Jewish soul is considered as having created an entire world. —Maimonides An Asian American or African American egg results in babies with obvious genetic traits, but what exactly makes an egg Jewish? —Caroline Binham, “What Makes an Egg Jewish?”1 I. Chicken or the Egg First and foremost, I blame Christiane Amanpour. Of course, that’s not fair. I should be discrete, conscious of possible lawsuits, avoiding accusations of slander. But I’m sure Christiane is too busy reporting on global crises from fields of landmines to be bothered by the ramblings of an embittered barren woman. The truth is, I don’t think I would be where I am today were it not for her. So, with my apologies to the flesh and blood woman, as well as to her entire news 1. Caroline Binham, “What Makes an Egg Jewish?” Portfolio (online journal), New York University Department of Journalism, March 30, 2003, http://journal​ ism.nyu.edu/publishing/archives/portfolio/binham/eggs_jewish.html. 652 Sayantani DasGupta organization, I do blame Christiane. I blame her for many things, but above all for making my father love her. Since her first appearance on CNN in the early 1980s, my father avidly followed her career. “That Christiane Amanpour!” He would murmur, his eyes transfixed on her serious face, “That, Allie, THAT’s the kind of woman you are going to become.” I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I would study her speech patterns, her determined expressions, her almost masculine beauty. Christiane wasn’t his first newscaster love. When I was a child, it had been the inimitable Jessica Savich. My parents’ marriage was also a lot younger then, and my mother far less tolerant of my father’s extramarital passions for television reporters. Jessica’s blonde-haired beauty had driven her almost to distraction, and my father’s abject mourning of her death had enraged her even further. “You’re such a cliché, David,” she accused, “sitting shiva for your blonde princess.” But my father was nonplussed by her reproaches. “Love,” he said, looking at me, but aiming his comments in my mother’s direction, “love knows no creed or color.” He had grabbed her playfully as she passed, earning himself a swat, accompanied by a noise my mother made clicking her tongue against her teeth. I was never sure what that sound meant, but it seemed to please him well enough. It took my father a few years to get over Jessica Savich’s death— Barbara Walters was a poor substitute—and by the time his eye was captured by Connie Chung, my mother had seemed to grow more tolerant of my father’s infatuations. “Well, she’s married to Maury Povich, so that’s something,” she offered. I wasn’t sure how that was to Connie Chung’s credit, if at all. My mother, ever clannish, added, “Do you think she’ll convert before they have children?” That was before Connie and Maury’s problems with infertility came out. But then came Christiane—whose hard-bitten reports made even Connie Chung seem an intellectual lightweight, whose effortless beauty made Cokie Roberts’s makeup team shudder. Christiane, the London born Persian émigré, the global citizen, the front-line daredevil whose bravery Sayantani DasGupta 653 went beyond the limits of gender. Not a good (female) reporter, not brave enough (for a woman), but a woman who tred where few dared to go, a woman who could do anything. As if proof of her super powers, Christiane eventually won over even my mother. It was during the war in the Balkans, when her reports about ethnic cleansing demanded the world’s attention. Christiane and her all-female crew made no apologies for focusing their camera lens on women ’s lives—placing these private stories about women’s bodies, families, and children on equal par with public stories about statehood, conflict, and government power. It was Christiane’s voice that rang out against not just murder, although there was plenty of that, but the rape camps in which...