Maddow: Obama Names First Transgender Nominee; USAJobs Adds Gender Identity
by: Autumn Sandeen
Thu Jan 07, 2010 at 09:30:00 AM EST

http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/14740/maddow-obama-names-fist-transgender-nominee-usajobs-adds-gender-identity

Well,  color me surprised -- and in the good way! Rachel Maddow picked up on two trans specific stories for her show last night. I was expecting either her or Keith Oberman to pick up on the Amanda Simpson story, but I didn't expect her to pick up on the second story about the USAJobs website story (First video is 2:06 minutes long; second video is 0:49 minutes long).

snip

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe this is the first time Rachel Maddow mentioned term transgender on her television show by itself (when it wasn't coupled with LGB  terminology in the phrase "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender") -- and she did it twice; and she used the community appropriate terms "trans" and "gender identity."

Rachel is not anything if not overly PC when she wants/needs to be.  Comes with the PhD.

Good to hear about some positive mainstream coverage.

She has around 1,801,000 views at her peek which was during the election, she has lost shares since then.  For comparison, Oprah gets between 23-26 million viewers a day, plus it's seen in 107 countries.  Even to be charitable, Oprah gets 10X the viewers that Rach does.  Oprah is mainstream, Rachel, like all of MSNCB, and its evil twin Fox, are fringe at best.

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Post Merge: January 07, 2010, 02:56:12 PM

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That seems pretty positive for Oprah, who has covered this topic and done so with great sensitivity by the way.  But to call cable mainstream just is not exactly true.  Get coverage on the View (though Barbra has covered it) and you have mainstream, get on cable, and you're on cable.

Oh and those figure are per week, not per day.

Regardless, it's nice to see positive coverage on a major news network.