CarnalNation

President Obama started the new year off with a move that was sure to please the LGBT community. On January 4, 2010, Obama appointed Amanda Simpson to the Commerce Department as the Senior Technical Adviser, making her the first transgendered member of a presidential cabinet. The mere fact that it wasn’t earth-shattering is, in itself, somewhat earth-shattering. But it was most definitely a first.

With a 30-year career in the aerospace and defense industry, Ms. Simpson has gone from being a test pilot and one of the YWCA's "Women on the Move" all the way to Washington, an achievement as noteworthy, if less sensational, as going from male to female.

Simpson went through her transition while employed by Raytheon, where she served until recently as Deputy Director in Advanced Technology Development. She also managed to have the defense technology colossus incorporate gender identity into its Equal Employment Opportunity Policy. And in 2005, Simpson made an unsuccessful run for the Arizona House of Representatives. But through all of it, she has most definitely maintained both her dignity and her sense of humor.

The folks on the right were quick to freak out about her appointment. Americans for Truth president Peter LaBarbera quaked at the prospect of an Obama “transgender quota” and asked, "How far does this politics of gay and transgender activism go?” Such knee-jerk responses were about as expected though they were fairly limited, contributing to the news event being a non-event.

Leave it to late night TV hosts to elevate a non-event to an internet sensation.

Two days after Simpson's appointment, David Letterman mentioned it in his monologue. Quick cut to stage right, where Alan Kalter, pseudo sidekick-cum-announcer put on his best “Home Alone” horrified face and yelped, “Amanda used to be a dude?” (Video below.)

The following day, the web was a-twitter with questions about whether Letterman's joke "went too far." In the Village Voice, Roy Edroso chronicled the assorted enraged reactions. This writer is with him in the jaded New Yorker camp: “We will admit that we have lived in New York a long time, which may have rendered us insensitive to how the joke may be taken in Fritters, Alabama. But we believe that the cause of freedom for all people gains nothing when Letterman is encouraged, as he was last summer in the Sarah Palin case, to tone it down for the rubes,” writes Edroso. Reactions ranged from total outrage by the Human Rights Campaign to Queerty's optimistic interpretation of the joke.

While the bloggers on both sides of the "issue" opine, Ms. Simpson is settling into her new role with most of American decidedly un-ruffled. Best of all the sound bites on the topic came from Amanda herself: “Being the first sucks," she said to ABC News.com. You got that right, Amanda.