Time magazine’s September 18 issue is devoted to “Firsts: Women Who Are Changing the World.” Some achievements are only in fame: Selena Gomez was honored as “the first person to reach 100 million followers on Instagram.” You didn't even have to be a woman: Candis Cayne was honored as the "first transgender woman with a major role on prime-time TV" [11 episodes of ABC's Dirty Sexy Money].
Some achievements didn’t feel like victories. The largest spread of text and photography -- a two-page spread -- was for Hillary Rodham Clinton, the first woman to win a major party’s nomination for president. The pull quote was inspirational, in powder blue, at the top of the page: “I don’t want anyone to be discouraged by my defeat. We can’t give up trying.”
But the picture looked like she just walked away from a burial site, and her interview response was a bite of bitter melon about Jim Comey and Russia ruining things:
This past election was unprecedented in so many ways. In my upcoming book I try to sort out what I could have done differently, what my campaign could have done differently. But you also have to recognize that you had the unprecedented intervention by an FBI director. You had a foreign adversary successfully influence the election. You had voter suppression aimed primarily at African Americans and young voters. And you had sexism, which was front and center.
Online, there was more from this vein:
I’m going to spend time during my book tour, and for many years to come, talking about what we need to learn about what was done to us in this election. Every day that goes by, we seem to learn more about the interference and the profound impact of that on the outcome. And that should terrify every American. I don’t care if you’re Republican or Democratic or what your independent leanings might be, what party you might belong to, we cannot tolerate being manipulated by a foreign power, especially one that is so bent on destabilizing democracy as Russia and its current leadership is.
This appeared in the magazine above the bitter Russia language:
Sexism still exerts a pull on our lives and our choices. It is a very subtle but clear continuing challenge that has to be acknowledged, and confronted. Because we do our work on the public stage, women in politics all have stories to tell. We are often demeaned or belittled or insulted for pursuing our interests and our careers. So we have to be doing all we can to open the aperture of understanding and acceptance.
For a note of balance, Time offered a whole page to Nikki Haley, the first Indian-American woman to be elected governor, and a paragraph and small photo for Kellyanne Conway, "the first woman to run a winning presidential campaign"...that defeated that other "pioneer" who reached a "pinnacle."
