Beauty queen is also a comedy queen

I can remember Jeanne Robertson (her name was Swanner then) from 1963, when she won the Miss North Carolina pageant back in the day when it meant something. Beauty pageants were as popular a television fare as football games. If I remember correctly, her talent involved a ukulele, but she was most noted for her height — 6-foot-2. She did well as the Miss America pageant but didn't win. I watched that pageant, too, intrigued by a beauty queen half a foot taller than I and only a few years older.

I had not thought about her much since then until 2001, when, as a member of the North Carolina Press Association board of directors, I met her when the Press Association named her its North Carolinian of the Year. Now, if that was a big deal (and we ink-stained wretches tried to convince ourselves that it was), she gave in return far more with a half-hour comedy return that left us all in stitches. You could say we all looked up to her.

Jeanne Robertson popped up again when someone sent my wife a link to a YouTube video of one of her performances. I watched it, recalling that hilarious routine she did eight years ago and laughing out loud at this new story. I should have known she'd be on YouTube. Everything is on YouTube.

The interesting thing about Jeanne Robertson, other than her height and her history and the way she has maintained her beauty queen stature and sense of style, is that her humor is strictly clean and realistic. Too many of today's comedians can't be funny without being profane or worse. Sexual or scatological humor can be funny, but so can Robertson's stories of Southern traditions and observations of people being themselves. I once laughed so hard at a Robin Williams monologue that I fell out of my chair. Robertson can be just as funny, but in a way that you can watch with your parents or grandchildren. Her routines remind me of Bill Cosby's funny stories about growing up, stories that people from all walks of life could identify with.

Jeanne Robertson didn't win Miss America, but she's done more with her talent and experiences than most beauty queens you can name.