The media-political complex is to blame for turning Sen. Barbara Boxer’s questioning of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice into a cat fight.
Amid the many, many questions about the Iraq war asked of Rice at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last week, Boxer included this clumsy shot that totally destroyed her actual point:
“Now, the issue is who pays the price, who pays the price? I’m not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old, and my grandchild is too young. You’re not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, within immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families, and I just want to bring us back to that fact.”
It sounds like Boxer was trying to point out the class differences between those who serve in Iraq, and the people of privilege who make decisions about the war, but don’t personally know anyone serving in Iraq. Boxer was including herself among the elite.
Rice went on to answer the question, how she fully understands who is paying the price, with their lives and limbs, to fight in Iraq. Later, Rice said she thought the question was oddly phrased, but said she wasn’t offended.
But then the media machine kicked in, and all focus from this hours-long hearing boiled down to Boxer’s remark, which was immediately misinterpreted in a number of ways.
White House spokesman Tony Snow called Boxer’s remark “a great leap backward for feminism.”
Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh said Boxer hit Rice “below the ovaries.”
Then Rice reflected, and got into the act. “I thought it was OK to not have children,” she said. “And I thought you could still make good decisions on behalf of the country if you were single and didn’t have children.”
Boxer, of course, didn’t say anything remotely like that.
Ironically, or conspiratorially, the media failed to give equal trumpeting to something First Lady Laura Bush said in December when she and President Bush gave People magazine their annual interview for the end-of-the-year issue.
The president said there is no doubt in his mind that a woman candidate could be president, and the First Lady agreed. Mrs. Bush referenced the Secretary of State and noted that while she would be a “really good candidate,” Rice is not interested in the job. She offered this explanation as to why:
“Probably because she is single, her parents are no longer living, she’s an only child. You need a very supportive family and supportive friends to have this job,” Laura Bush said.
Ouch.
Rice’s above reply absolutely seems a more fitting response to Mrs. Bush’s remark, rather than to Sen. Boxer’s inquiry. Rrrrrrrrrrrr. (Cat fight sound).
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