{"id":9605,"date":"2007-01-12T16:27:39","date_gmt":"2007-01-12T21:27:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9605.html"},"modified":"2007-01-12T16:27:39","modified_gmt":"2007-01-12T21:27:39","slug":"boxer-rice-and-the-dumbest-controversy-of-the-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/boxer-rice-and-the-dumbest-controversy-of-the-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Boxer, Rice, and the dumbest ‘controversy’ of the day"},"content":{"rendered":"

For those of you who don’t peruse the right side of the blogosphere, you may not realize that a surprising number<\/a> of conservatives are apoplectic<\/i> about an exchange between Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over personal investment in the war in Iraq.<\/p>\n

This piece<\/a> in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post seems to be the source of all the commotion.<\/p>\n

Boxer was wholly in character for her party \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

Rice appeared before the Senate in defense of President Bush’s tactical change in Iraq, and quickly encountered Boxer.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

Breathtaking. Simply breathtaking. […] 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Following the NY Post’s lead, conservative bloggers have been in a frenzy, accusing Boxer or everything from callousness, to anti-feminism, to homophobia.<\/p>\n

I’m afraid these critics have lost their collective minds.
\n
\nIn the context of the hearing, Boxer was talking about the costs of the war being shouldered by a small portion of American society, and that those sacrifices generally aren’t felt by senators or cabinet secretaries. It was a point about personal sacrifice — and how thousands of families are paying the ultimate personal price for this misguided war.<\/p>\n

The NY Post accused Boxer of arguing that Rice isn’t “qualified” to be Secretary of State because she has no children. That’s insane; Boxer said nothing of the sort. The senator merely noted that neither she nor Rice stand to lose any close relatives in this conflict. That doesn’t have anything to do with either of their qualifications or their personal lives.<\/p>\n

Indeed, as John Cole noted<\/a>, Boxer applied the exact same standard to herself<\/i>.<\/p>\n

[S]ince the wingnuts think they have a winner here, let’s help them out. If you read the transcript, Boxer actually said SHE would not pay a price, either. In other words, she attacked not only Rice, but she attacked herself. I think that is proof positive that Sen. Boxer is sexist….<\/p>\n

All Boxer said was that she and Condi will not pay a personal price for any decisions they made. Reading that as an attack on Rice’s competence, much less homophobia, is beyond silly.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It occurs to me that perhaps the right considers this absurd flap an opportunity to change the subject away from the administration’s tragic escalation plan. It’s far preferable to launch some bogus, trumped up attack against Barbara Boxer than it is to argue the merits behind Bush’s “new” idea. If so, today’s freak-out over Boxer’s comments is just a shell game, and no one really believes it’s a real story.<\/p>\n

At least, I hope that’s the motivation. Otherwise, there are a whole lot of conservative bloggers who are utterly and completely lost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For those of you who don’t peruse the right side of the blogosphere, you may not realize that a surprising number of conservatives are apoplectic about an exchange between Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over personal investment in the war in Iraq. This piece in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9605\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}