The Silence of the Communities

Since you don't have any children, why do think you have any credibility?

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."

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.

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.

It would take a truly hard heart not to be touched, deeply, by the sacrifices made by the young men and women now wearing their country's uniform. And one can only imagine the pain felt by the families of those killed and cruelly wounded in service to America. Just as it was hard to imagine the agony of the loved ones left behind on 9/11. But even to suggest that Condoleezza Rice is not fit to serve her country because she is childless is beyond bizarre.

It is perverse.

A woman's place is in the home, Barbara? Get out of here, Ms. Rice; go make babies? Where are the feminists? Where is the equality gang that would be all over a white male asking the exact same thing?