A photo of a beaming, bespectacled woman in a yellow coat attending President Donald Trump's inauguration in Washington, D.C., on Friday made the rounds on social media over the 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 wasn't a random admirer, but U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar.
Online critics chimed in:
Alex Wall saw the photo on SFgate.com, a San Francisco Chronicle website. It was taken by Joe Raedle of Getty Images. Wall tweeted: "@SFGate that's Senator Klobuchar, not 'a woman.' Three US Senators took a selfie. Not two and "a woman."
Beth Pitzel Commers wrote to Klobuchar on Facebook: "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."
Klobuchar took the gaffe in stride, issuing a response on 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."
Representatives from SFgate.com attributed the mistake to Getty Images and said they fixed the caption immediately after it was spotted.
"We also apologized to the senator for not catching this earlier," said Brandon Mercer, executive producer of SFgate.com.
A Getty Images spokesman said Monday night that they processed more than 20,000 images from the inauguration. "Unfortunately, we were unable to identify Senator Amy Klobuchar at the time of the image upload," said Kelly Goucher of Getty. "However, the caption was quickly updated to reflect accuracy as soon as we were alerted. Our apologies go out to Sen. Klobuchar
Erin Adler • 612-673-1781
