Barbara Boxer's ad hominem attack on Condoleeza Rice has been getting a lot of attention, as it should.

While the Boxer remark manifested itself unmistakably as a left-versus-right issue, it touched on a widespread popular prejudice. A New York Post editorial focused on the former:

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."

Breathtaking.

Simply breathtaking.

We scarcely know where to begin.

The junior senator from California apparently believes that an accom plished, 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.

It's hard to imagine the firestorm that similar comments would have ignited, coming from a Republican to a Democrat, or from a man to a woman, in the United States Senate.

Not that logic has anything to do with ad hominem attacks (which are by definition illogical), but Condoleeza Rice has done a good of defending herself without stooping to Barbara Boxer's level:

"No," Rice answered when asked if her status hinders her understanding of the sacrifices involved. "I also think that being a single woman does not in any way make me incapable of understanding not just those sacrifices but also that nothing of value is ever won without sacrifice."

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., told Rice during a testy Senate hearing on Thursday that without an immediate family Rice will pay no personal price for the Bush administration policy in Iraq.

Rice has said she was at first perplexed by the exchange, and later told Fox News, "Gee, I thought single women had come further than that."

It's as illogical as calling someone a "chickenhawk," and it shares the same illogical supposition -- that one's status or background is more important than one's argument -- and that such status should be controlling.

In light of Dinish D'Souza's recent book, I'm also wondering whether Secretary Rice's status as a powerful woman might be considered offensive to Islamists, and an invitation to more terrorism, but I hardly expect Barbara Boxer to raise that issue.

But she touches on a deeper prejudice against the childless, which as Mark Daniels noted, crosses party and political lines:

Boxer's comments to Rice were, as her comments often are, tone deaf, seemingly reflective of a widespread prejudice in American culture. In fact, it's a prejudice I was discussing with a friend a few days ago, before Rice's appearance before the Senate committee. It's the prejudice many people blessed with children seem to have toward the childless. These folks often regard those who've been unable to have children as second-class adults, devoid of the normal complement of human emotions or even intellectual capacity. I see these prejudicial attitudes toward the childless all the time.

I've seen these attitudes too, and I don't think the prejudice is limited to prejudice against women. Men who don't have children are also viewed with distrust -- as if they're regarded as less than real men.

Once again, I am reminded of my wonderful Berkeley neighbors, a childless couple whose libertarian views on certain issues were greeted with derisive remarks such as this:

"You only think that way because you don't have children! IF YOU HAD CHILDREN, YOU'D UNDERSTAND!"

But culture wars are always arrogant and presumptuous, and lead to further recriminations of arrogance and presumptuousness on both blasted "sides."