Boxer’s “personal insult” of Rice

On Thursday night on C-SPAN I happened to see Sen. Barbara Boxer’s long harangue against Secretary Rice, including the part where Boxer said that neither she nor Rice would pay a personal price in a loved one killed in Iraq. While Boxer was being very tough on Rice throughout her remarks, nothing struck me as offensive, disrespectful, or in any way out of the ordinary about that particular remark. But the next day, to my amazement, the entire “conservative” establishment went crazy portraying Boxer’s unexceptional comment as a personal attack of horrible proportions. Thus the lead editorial in the January 12 New York Post cried:

BOXER’S LOW BLOW

Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, an appalling scold from California, wasted no time yesterday in dragging the debate over Iraq about as low as it can go—attacking Secre tary of State Condoleezza Rice for being a childless woman. [Emphasis added.]

Boxer was wholly in character for her party—New York’s own two Democratic senators, Chuck Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton, were predictably opportunistic—but the Golden State lawmaker earned special attention for the tasteless jibes she aimed at Rice. [Emphasis added.]

Rice appeared before the Senate in defense of President Bush’s tactical change in Iraq, and quickly encountered Boxer.

“Who pays the price? I’m not going to pay a personal price,” Boxer said. “My kids are too old, and my grandchild is too young.”

Then, to Rice: “You’re not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an immediate family.”

Breathtaking.

Simply breathtaking.

We scarcely know where to begin.

What’s breathtaking here is that the Post finds anything breathtaking in Boxer’s comment. She was simply saying that she, because her children are too old and her grandchild is too young, does not have any immediate relative who might go into the armed forces, and, without saying anything specific about Rice’s family situation, added that Rice, like Boxer herself, also has no immediate relatives who might be in the armed forces. Boxer was putting herself and Rice in the same category. She was not attacking Rice.

The Post continues:

The junior senator from California apparently believes that an accomplished, seasoned diplomat, a renowned scholar and an adviser to two presidents like Condoleezza Rice is not fully qualified to make policy at the highest levels of the American government because she is a single, childless woman.

What is there remotely in Boxer’s statement that indicates that she said that Rice’s childless state disqualifies her for high office?

It’s hard to imagine the firestorm that similar comments would have ignited, coming from a Republican to a Democrat, or from a man to a woman, in the United States Senate. (Surely the Associated Press would have put the observation a bit higher than the 18th paragraph of a routine dispatch from Washington.)

But put that aside.

The vapidity—the sheer mindlessness—of Sen. Boxer’s assertion makes it clear that the next two years are going to be a time of bitterness and rancor, marked by pettiness of spirit and political self-indulgence of a sort not seen in America for a very long time.

The mindlessness is entirely on the part of the Post’s editors. They are indicting an “assertion” that Boxer never made.

While the low-life, low-brow New York Post may not seem the best place to go for evidence that “conservatives” have gone the low road, the fact is the entire Republican and conservative establishment has been saying pretty much the same thing. Some samples:

Tony Snow, White House Press Secretary:

“I don’t know if she was intentionally that tacky, but I do think it’s outrageous. Here you got a professional woman, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Barbara Boxer is sort of throwing little jabs because Condi doesn’t have children, as if that means that she doesn’t understand the concerns of parents. Great leap backward for feminism,” Snow told FOX News Talk’s Brian and The Judge.

Fox News:

I think it was more than cheap—it was degrading,” Fox News commentator Karen Hanretty said in an interview. “There’s nothing more vicious than feminine politics, and Boxer proved herself a shrill harpy.’’

Fox News ran headlines all day Friday on the topic, such as, “Will Boxer Apologize?’’ and “Boxer Slimes Rice,’’ and some conservative critics charged that Boxer inappropriately raised questions about Rice’s personal life.

Rush Limbaugh:

I’ve never seen people who are more angry in victory than this bunch. I don’t care if it’s the elected officials or Democrats in general out there. Barbara Boxer hit [Rice] below the ovaries yesterday …

Here’s what I think is going on here. The Bush administration is losing, its constant lies for the last four years in Iraq are being exposed. So what do the Bush supporters do? They desperately (an overused word that I never use, but here I make an exception because it is truly appropriate) try to divert attention from the administration’s and its supporters’ miserable record and the exposure thereof onto some supposedly grave personal insult made by a Democratic senator against Condi the Maid. The orchestrated outrage about Boxer is the kind of low, cynical behavior you’d ordinarily expect of the Democrats—picking up any argument at hand, no matter how false, to try to make the opposing party look bad and avoid scrutiny of your own party.

It appears that supporting George W. Bush doesn’t just rot out people’s brains, but their honesty and character as well. What a ruinous effect this man has had on conservatism.

- end of initial entry -

M. Jose writes:

About the conservative commentary on Rice, it gets weirder. I can’t find a reference right away, but I distinctly remember a radio talk show host (I believe that it was Mike Gallagher, Rusty Humphries, or Todd Feinburg) saying that Boxer was “implying something about Rice’s orientation,” i.e. suggesting that she was a lesbian.

I have absolutely no idea how one could see that in Boxer’s words, but someone actually suggesting that that was something that Ms. Boxer intended to imply.

Ben writes:

Yes, of course you are right. This phony outrage is nothing more then a cover up for the lies, half truths, and massive failures of this President that the mainstream conservative movement has supported in a Undead-like fashion over the past four years. They are getting as worried as Bush was the other night when giving his speech. We know that phony outrage is a typical tactic to dodge debate and questions that are legitimate. Instead of answering the question asked or responding to a statement, a person will blow up and refuse further discussion until they get an apology. This is what the “conservatives” are doing now. Using a modern liberal tactic in order to shift from their failures. We even have Tony Snow defending feminism as legitimate to attack Boxer. The conservative movement is pretty much dead in the water and lack any kind of respectability at all.

This phony outrage is as laughable as their outrage of the Mary Cheney comments from Kerry during the election.

Brandon F. writes:

I think too that the establishment conservatives had their pro-feminist sensibilities bruised by the questions from Boxer. How dare you criticize a woman for not having children.

Whether that was her meaning or not is irrelevant.

I do think however that Ms. Boxer’s questions were pathetic and unprofessional. Political grandstanding at it’s worst.

LA replies:

She’s against our involvement there, and doesn’t want a single American to die for it. So she was using tough tactics, bringing home that people are dying for this messed up policy. When we consider all the horrendous things Democrats have done over the years, really vicious demonizing tactics against Republicans, this was nowhere near the upper rung of badness.

Brandon replies:

It ain’t me. it ain’t me, I ain’t no senator’s son…Boxer is simply rehashing hippie rhetoric. I really don’t know much about her but if she is a liberal that makes her philosophical angle on opposition for the war in contrast with yours (and mine). On that basis I cannot personally accept her sanctimonious chiding of Rice.

LA replies:

She’s a bad and unpleasant and unintelligent liberal. I’m not making any general defense of her. I’m simply saying that she did not say the thing she is accused of saying. This is not about her but about the Republicans’ false attacks on her.

Ben quotes a news story:

Rice has said she was at first perplexed by the exchange, and later told Fox News, “Gee, I thought single women had come further than that.”

Boxer, D-Calif., defended herself in a statement Friday.

“I spoke the truth at the committee hearing, which is that neither Secretary Rice nor I have family members that will pay the price for this escalation,” she said. “My point was to focus attention on our military families who continue to sacrifice because this administration has not developed a political solution to the situation in Iraq.”

You know, the conservative movement is only hurting themselves with this. The “conservatives” are making the issue about feminism and our “progress” and the rights of single women while Boxer is making the issue about the military families making the real sacrifices. Have I just entered the twilight zone or is this a complete reversal? Aren’t conservatives suppose to be the ones who are pro military families while liberals are supposed to be more concerned with crap like single women rights?

It may be “It ain’t me. it ain’t me, I ain’t no senator’s son” on Boxer’s part but it’s more coherent then the conservatives “outrage.” It appears that the talking points have gone out to the conservative pundits and this is going to be their talk all week making asses out of themselves talking about the wonders of feminism and single women/mothers.

Alan Levine writes:

While I agree with your contempt for the hysterical reaction of some conservatives to Boxer’s remarks to Rice, I do think that those remarks represented a sort of attack and an indulgence in emotionalism. The fact that Rice has no “immediate personal involvement” of the sort described by Boxer is in this war is hardly relevant to the real issues (or Rice’s actual incompetence!) It is arguably an example of the sort of feminine emotionalism that has no place in serious political discussion.

By the way, the same sort of remarks could have been made to or about Dean Acheson during the Korean War. I am less sure about this, but I don’t think Cordell Hull had anyone in the armed forces during World War II, either.

LA replies:

That Boxer was attacking Rice and was using feminine emotionalism in place of serious political discussion is true, as I have already acknowledged, but besides the point. The issue here is the conservatives’ charge that Boxer was attacking Rice for being childless (and even as being unqualified for office because she’s childless), and the fact remains that the charge is false.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 14, 2007 02:16 PM | Send