Inauguration Day photo failed to identify Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar.
The following article by Erin Adler was posted on the StarTribune website January 23, 2017:
A photo of a beaming, bespectacled woman in a yellow coat attending President Donald Trump’s inauguration Friday made the rounds on social media this weekend, inspiring jeers, laughs and cries of sexism.
The woman in question poses for a selfie with U.S. Sens. Bernie Sanders and John McCain, and the photo’s caption identifies her simply as “a woman.”
The problem? The woman isn’t a random admirer, but U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, snapping a picture with two colleagues.
Online mayhem ensued:
Alex Wall tweeted: “@SFGate that’s Senator Klobuchar, not ‘a woman.’ Three US Senators took a selfie. Not two and “a woman.”
In a Facebook post, Beth Pitzel Commers wrote to Klobuchar: “I hope you take this caption as a challenge to make so much damn noise in DC for the next 4 years that they never overlook or forget your name again. Godspeed.”
Other posters rationalized that perhaps Klobuchar wasn’t as recognizable as the two former presidential candidates.
Wall saw the photo on SFgate.com, a San Francisco Chronicle website. It was taken by Joe Raedle of Getty Images. It’s not clear who failed to initially identify Klobuchar, Minnesota’s senior senator and the state’s first elected female senator, but the caption was later updated to include her name.
Klobuchar took the gaffe in stride, issuing a response Sunday night:
“The reaction on social media has been both endearing and amusing. Since only Senators were seated in that section (with many layers of security) it did seem a bit odd that they didn’t try to pin down who the random “woman” was sitting next to Senators McCain and Sanders. Next time I will wear a big name tag or better yet a Vikings jersey with my name on the back.”
You can view the original post here.