"Once again, no one in charge had given any thought to the possibility that a woman would be involved"
About this Quote
The sting in Andrea Mitchell's line is how casually it treats sexism as a recurring administrative glitch: "Once again" signals pattern, not anomaly, and "no one in charge" spreads culpability across an institution, not a lone bad actor. This is newsroom-grade indictment, delivered with the coolness of someone who has watched power operate up close. The sentence doesn’t need outrage; its restraint is the outrage.
The intent is diagnostic. Mitchell isn’t describing a single oversight so much as naming a governance failure: decision-makers design plans, policies, and contingencies around an unspoken default human - male - and then act surprised when reality includes women. The subtext is that exclusion often arrives wearing the bland mask of pragmatism. No one had to say "women don’t belong here" for the outcome to be the same; the absence of imagination does the disciplining.
The phrasing also punctures the myth that progress is linear. "Once again" implies that women’s presence in high-stakes arenas still registers as an edge case, something to be "accounted for" rather than assumed. That’s why the line lands: it reframes discrimination as infrastructure, baked into protocols and assumptions, maintained by people who consider themselves neutral.
Contextually, it fits Mitchell’s long career covering politics and institutions where access, credibility, and safety are routinely organized around men - from campaign planes and press gaggles to war zones and corporate hierarchies. The quote works because it exposes how power keeps reproducing itself: not always through malice, but through lazy, confident omission.
The intent is diagnostic. Mitchell isn’t describing a single oversight so much as naming a governance failure: decision-makers design plans, policies, and contingencies around an unspoken default human - male - and then act surprised when reality includes women. The subtext is that exclusion often arrives wearing the bland mask of pragmatism. No one had to say "women don’t belong here" for the outcome to be the same; the absence of imagination does the disciplining.
The phrasing also punctures the myth that progress is linear. "Once again" implies that women’s presence in high-stakes arenas still registers as an edge case, something to be "accounted for" rather than assumed. That’s why the line lands: it reframes discrimination as infrastructure, baked into protocols and assumptions, maintained by people who consider themselves neutral.
Contextually, it fits Mitchell’s long career covering politics and institutions where access, credibility, and safety are routinely organized around men - from campaign planes and press gaggles to war zones and corporate hierarchies. The quote works because it exposes how power keeps reproducing itself: not always through malice, but through lazy, confident omission.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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