In NewMexiKen’s copy of the Sunday New York Times an article about Senator Elizabeth Dole states she was the “first female cabinet secretary.” I wonder how many times the authors of the article, Adam Nagourney and Kate Zernike, have driven or walked by the Frances Perkins Building in Washington. That’s the headquarters for the Department of Labor, which Ms. Perkins headed from 1933-1945. She was the first woman cabinet member (and thereby the first woman ever in the presidential line of succession).
The online version of the story about Mrs. Dole has been corrected to read “the secretary of both transportation and labor.” It points out that the Senator is not doing well as head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. That may be due to the temper of the public, but the word on Mrs. Dole in Washington always was “all style, no substance.”
Frances Perkins, by the way, went to court to maintain the right to keep her surname when she married in 1913.
Even more unbelievably, how could the authors not have seen the movie Dirty Dancing?