Jersey Tawk – By Ward Peck
Rush Limbaugh: feminist
Several weeks ago there was a minor eruption in the blogosphere and among the Sunday morning talking heads about what had been said while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was giving a senate hearing on Iraq.
California Senator Barbara Boxer, it seems, committed a taboo by pointing out that Madam Secretary had no children.
The New York Post called it a “Low Blow,” and Rush Limbaugh went so far as to describe Boxer as “trying to lynch this African-American woman the day before Martin Luther King Day.”
Never mind that Boxer was trying to make the point that, “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,” according to a transcript.
Never mind that Rice was and is if not an architect of the war then one of it’s chief salespeople, selling death, destruction, chaos and anarchy to the American people to the tune of $200 billion a year.
What had Limbaugh and the boys on Fox News so upset was that this fact– Rice’s childlessness is somehow a defect that impugns Rice’s worth as a woman.
It is 2007 and yet those seemingly defending the most powerful woman in the world interpret Rice’s choice not to have a child as something embarrassing. You can rise to the top of your field, play Aristotle to Boy George’s Alexander, make kings and tyrants quake, but if you don’t get around to popping out a kid or two all those accomplishments are somehow diminished.
That’s not Boxer’s point; it’s Limbaugh’s.
Maybe she doesn’t like kids. Maybe she had better things to do. This is a woman who is literally married to her job (she famously referred to the president as her husband, a Freudian slip to be sure, especially considering she does not nor never had a husband to get confused with the president). This is not poor little homely Leezza who never got around to snagging a husband. A woman with as many resources and as driven as Rice could have gotten herself a child – with or without a man.
Rice herself could not bring herself to the level of her defenders. While she did criticize Boxer’s logic, she did not try to pretend that the senator’s observation had opened some wound of maternity deferred.
“In retrospect, gee, I thought single women had come further than that, that the only question is, 'Are you making good decisions because you have kids?'” The Washington Post reported about what Rice said on Fox News.
The fact is the much ado about whether the secretary of state has a child lock on her liquor cabinet demonstrates that the war’s defenders, whose rationales and numbers are disappearing faster than the January sun, are grasping at straws.
It used to be that guys who got draft deferments could call a multiple amputee combat veteran a coward with impunity. Now no one’s buying the chicken hawk snake oil they’re selling. Having lost the momentum that allowed them to railroad over reality, they try to get it back be defended a woman’s honor over something that no longer defines a woman’s honor.
A week or so ago the New York Times Web site featured a graphic comparing the annual cost of the Iraq War to the estimated annual cost of universal health care.
The cost in treasure of our Mesopotamian adventure? Two hundred billion dollars per year. The cost of assuring every American has basic health insurance? One hundred billion dollars.
And what has our $200 billion investment bought us? Tens of thousands, possibly many more, killed. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, injured, maimed, traumatized, mourning and very, very angry. Are there positive benefits to our invasion and occupation of Iraq? Saddam is dead and gone (and Iran benefits), we are fighting the terrorists abroad rather than at home (yet created a jihadist incubator whose graduates are not only battle hardened, but know our tactics and methods).
But let’s not talk about that. I want to hear misogynists clumsily confuse their contempt with compassion.
Several weeks ago there was a minor eruption in the blogosphere and among the Sunday morning talking heads about what had been said while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was giving a senate hearing on Iraq.
California Senator Barbara Boxer, it seems, committed a taboo by pointing out that Madam Secretary had no children.
The New York Post called it a “Low Blow,” and Rush Limbaugh went so far as to describe Boxer as “trying to lynch this African-American woman the day before Martin Luther King Day.”
Never mind that Boxer was trying to make the point that, “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,” according to a transcript.
Never mind that Rice was and is if not an architect of the war then one of it’s chief salespeople, selling death, destruction, chaos and anarchy to the American people to the tune of $200 billion a year.
What had Limbaugh and the boys on Fox News so upset was that this fact– Rice’s childlessness is somehow a defect that impugns Rice’s worth as a woman.
It is 2007 and yet those seemingly defending the most powerful woman in the world interpret Rice’s choice not to have a child as something embarrassing. You can rise to the top of your field, play Aristotle to Boy George’s Alexander, make kings and tyrants quake, but if you don’t get around to popping out a kid or two all those accomplishments are somehow diminished.
That’s not Boxer’s point; it’s Limbaugh’s.
Maybe she doesn’t like kids. Maybe she had better things to do. This is a woman who is literally married to her job (she famously referred to the president as her husband, a Freudian slip to be sure, especially considering she does not nor never had a husband to get confused with the president). This is not poor little homely Leezza who never got around to snagging a husband. A woman with as many resources and as driven as Rice could have gotten herself a child – with or without a man.
Rice herself could not bring herself to the level of her defenders. While she did criticize Boxer’s logic, she did not try to pretend that the senator’s observation had opened some wound of maternity deferred.
“In retrospect, gee, I thought single women had come further than that, that the only question is, 'Are you making good decisions because you have kids?'” The Washington Post reported about what Rice said on Fox News.
The fact is the much ado about whether the secretary of state has a child lock on her liquor cabinet demonstrates that the war’s defenders, whose rationales and numbers are disappearing faster than the January sun, are grasping at straws.
It used to be that guys who got draft deferments could call a multiple amputee combat veteran a coward with impunity. Now no one’s buying the chicken hawk snake oil they’re selling. Having lost the momentum that allowed them to railroad over reality, they try to get it back be defended a woman’s honor over something that no longer defines a woman’s honor.
A week or so ago the New York Times Web site featured a graphic comparing the annual cost of the Iraq War to the estimated annual cost of universal health care.
The cost in treasure of our Mesopotamian adventure? Two hundred billion dollars per year. The cost of assuring every American has basic health insurance? One hundred billion dollars.
And what has our $200 billion investment bought us? Tens of thousands, possibly many more, killed. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, injured, maimed, traumatized, mourning and very, very angry. Are there positive benefits to our invasion and occupation of Iraq? Saddam is dead and gone (and Iran benefits), we are fighting the terrorists abroad rather than at home (yet created a jihadist incubator whose graduates are not only battle hardened, but know our tactics and methods).
But let’s not talk about that. I want to hear misogynists clumsily confuse their contempt with compassion.
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