Condi Rice, Iraq, and not having children?

Posted by Tara Lohan at 6:44 AM on January 17, 2007.

The best commentary I've seen on this sad situation comes from Elijah Emily Nella:

Welcome to the fourth wave of feminism: Republican Feminism. If you didn't understand Post-Feminism, your head's going to spin around this one . This New Wave is gaining popularity and media attention Susan B. Anthony would never have dreamt about. This feminism has Rush Limbaugh on it's side.

Last week, Condoleezza Rice and White House spokesman, Tony Snow, completely reworked a simple question Senator Barbara Boxer posed to Ms. Condi Rice at a Senate hearing on Thursday concerning the war in Iraq. Boxer asked Rice, "Who pays the price? I'm not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too young. You're not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with an 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's the same old argument we've all been using since 2003 -- Congress and the White House don't have kids going to Iraq (with the exceptions of Senators John McCain and Jim Webb). The families of the soldiers who've died in Iraq (and thank you, the New York Times, for printing all of their young faces in your January 1st, 2007 issue), are the only ones who are personally losing in this endless war. Boxer simply brought up the same angle, yet again, but with the accountability that neither she nor Condi, have any family at stake.

However, with no way of responding to this statement except with an absurd, illogical retort from left field, Condi took the smart move -- evading the issue. "I thought it was O.K. to be single," Ms. Rice said. "I thought it was O.K. to not have children, and I thought you could still make good decisions on behalf of the country if you were single and didn't have children."

Luckily for Ms. Rice, the media was on her side, a.k.a. framing the issue the way she wanted it. Rice told Fox News, "I guess that means I don't have kids. Was that the purpose of that? Well, at the time I just found it a bit confusing frankly. But 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?"

It's easy for the public to have Alzheimer's when you don't remind them that the "it" Rice is referring to is Boxer's question: "Who pays the price?" Way to work it, Condi. Just forget about what Boxer really said and talk about being a single woman. Let's face it -- if Condoleezza was a Democrat against the war who responded with that non-sequitor, the Republicans and the media would have brought up The Big M; she would have been called "a menopausal, defensive woman who can't focus."

However, Condi is not a Lib, she's on the Right; therefore the absurdity has the media backing to fly. Tony Snow shared with FOX News ("We Report. You Decide.") the real kicker: "I don't know if [Boxer] 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."

That's right. Feminism. Not just the word "feminism" but attached to a famous, subconsciously-known lunar quote allusion. Nice touch. Last week on Rush Limbaugh's show, his feminism came out of the closet. "Here you have a rich white chick with a huge, big mouth, trying to lynch this -- an African American woman -- right before Martin Luther King Day, hitting below the ovaries here. What about the childless Gloria Steinem? Drum her out of the feminist movement? I'm going to tell you, I was joking the other day about setting up a lobbying group for the childless. This kind of thinking is exactly where we're headed with Democrats.”

I'm so glad we have Rush now speaking up for us. We've always needed him. This is one giant step for mankind.

Tagged as: rush limbaugh, fox news, condi rice, barbara boxer

Tara Lohan is a managing editor at AlterNet.