Photo of the Day

First, this is the caption:

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton answers a question during a joint press conference with Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird State Department in Washington, DC, on August 4, 2011. Clinton urged the Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab militants to stop blocking aid to famine-hit areas of Somalia and allow it to reach scores of starving people. Clinton said during it was tragic that the Shebab militants were preventing assistance from reaching the most vulnerable, children, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Let me just underline, in case you have not been following this story, how serious the issue is: Almost 30,000 children under the age of 5 have died in Somalia because of the famine, which is being complicated by militants' thievery. Aid organizations are having to serve "wet food," already-prepared meals, soup-kitchen style, because sending people away with dry food puts them at risk for violence by militants who want to stock up on non-perishables.

This is a dire global emergency, and it is incredibly important that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is speaking not only about the famine, but about the terrorism exacerbating the food insecurity.

Now, this is the Getty Images photo paired with that caption:


It's not incidental that wire services continually publish pictures of Clinton caught making funny faces mid-sentence in some childish attempt to mock and discredit her, especially when attached to stories like this one. She is one of the most famous and influential women in the world, who chooses to use her extraordinary platform to speak on behalf of other women, who are, with children, disproportionately affected by famines.

To treat her like some silly bim is not merely to say, "What she says does not matter," but also to tacitly endorse the message that women do not matter.

For shame.

[Related Reading: Hmm, Attack of the 50-Foot Vagina-American, Oh, Getty Images, Today in Trailblazing and Misogyny, Ah, Hillary Clinton: How We Still Love to Demean You, Photos of the Day.]