Do You Detect the Scent of a Double Standard?

Last week a US Senator speaking to the Secretary of State about the war in Iraq said this

,"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 price, as I understand it, within immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families."

Yesterday, on PBS, a newsman said this to the President of the United States

,"The people who are now sacrificing are, you know, the volunteer military - the Army and the U.S. Marines and their families. They're the only people who are actually sacrificing anything at this point."

In the first case, involving a woman speaking to a woman, the speaker, Barbara Boxer was castigated by the rightwing, from Sullivan to Saunders, for intemperate speech. Their twist was that she somehow called into question Rice's career and personal choices that lead her to have no children. There were a lot of suggestions that Boxer had a sexist agenda. A more rational reading probably would be that Boxer was pointing out to Rice that neither of them had a personal stake in the President's policies.

In the second incident, involving a man speaking to a man, and making the same point that Boxer made a week ago, there was no outcry from the right. I wonder who the sexist ones here are.