“Chelsea Manning Changed the Course of History. Now She’s Focusing on Herself,” is the sickening headline of the September issue of Vogue magazine. The fawning story begins with what we guess is supposed to be an endearing description of “her” appearance and newfound comfort in “her” own skin. It goes on to tell much of Manning’s story, though it’s factually wrong in some details. More on that in a minute, but suffice to say the Left is in full swing happily celebrating its new transgender poster child.

We say the story is sickening for two reasons. First, Bradley/Chelsea Manning is an individual who deserves our pity, prayer and help, not vacuous celebrations. His gender dysphoria and what strikes us as narcissistic personality disorder is tragic, not heroic. He’s had a difficult life, including his father leaving at a young age and his mother attempting suicide. Transgendered people are at a drastically higher risk of suicide attempts than the general population, and it’s no surprise that Manning, too, has tried. And yet to Vogue, his only “problem” is that he couldn’t be “herself” until taxpayer-funded transition surgery.

Second, Manning is a traitor who released more than a million pages of classified information about U.S. intelligence operations to WikiLeaks, endangering lives and disrupting policy. He aided and abetted the enemies of America while in our nation’s uniform, all because he decided, on his own authority, to stimulate “worldwide discussion, debate and reforms.” Yet his disclosures were totally self-serving. And Vogue lied about some of the information: “The breach’s breadth was startling, as were its contents,” the magazine reports, including “the so-called Collateral Murder video, showing a U.S. helicopter killing a group of Baghdad pedestrians that included children and press.”

“On the contrary,” rejoins the Washington Examiner’s Tom Rogan, “it shows the lawful targeting of insurgents armed with rifles and a grenade launcher. Those ‘Baghdad pedestrians’ were threatening a U.S. Army unit that suffered one of the highest casualty rates of any unit in Iraq.”

In any case, it’s fair to say he’d still be in prison — or the grave — if he was still a man. Barack Obama would have had no politically advantageous reason to give him a ridiculous commutation deal, all while couching it as enough being enough. “Let’s be clear,” Obama said (using a phrase typically indicating he’s lying), “Chelsea Manning has served a tough prison sentence. I feel very comfortable that justice has been served.”

No, Obama’s political objective was served, and it is still being served by this tripe from Vogue and other outlets that sycophantically flatter Manning and their own “enlightened” cosmopolitan egos.