Kirsten Powers

In a world exploding in violence, the State Department last week identified an evil closer to home: Bill O'Reilly.

The Fox News host had criticized State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki. "With all due respect ... that woman looks way out of her depth. ... It just doesn't look like she has the gravitas for the job," O'Reilly said.

This, according to Obama administration officials, is sexist.

Marie Harf, the department's deputy spokesperson, blasted O'Reilly from her official Twitter account as lacking "intelligence and class" and then justified the juvenile tweet from the State Department podium, telling reporters that O'Reilly used "sexist, personally offensive language that I actually don't think (he) would ever use about a man."

Sexism is a serious problem and a serious accusation. It's true there are many people who dismiss women as unserious and out of their depth not because they are, but because they are women. Bill O'Reilly isn't one of them.

I know. As a Fox News contributor, I've worked with him for eight years, including weekly segments where we often disagree heatedly. O'Reilly does not discriminate when it comes to expressing tough judgments. Anyone with a passing familiarity with his work knows this, which is what makes Harf's accusation so irresponsible.

Just ask Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, whom O'Reilly called "beneath contempt." O'Reilly expressed dismay that "The Washington Post would employ a guy like that." That's just one of a multitude of examples of O'Reilly speaking more harshly about a man than about Psaki.

Democrats have become so trigger happy with the "war on women" charge that they find sexism lurking behind nearly every disagreement. It's a toxic tactic to silence anyone who disagrees. Have we really gotten to the point that any criticism of the competence of the State Department spokeswoman by a man is sexist? Apparently.

Last week, Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz borrowed the terminology of domestic abuse to attack Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. At a Milwaukee roundtable, she said, "Republican Tea Party extremists like Scott Walker … are grabbing us by the hair and pulling us back."

She also claimed that "Walker has given women the back of his hand. I know that is stark. ... But that is reality."

It's actually the opposite. Walker disagrees with Democrats, which is quite different from hitting a woman or dragging her by her hair, even metaphorically.

Wasserman Schultz admitted she shouldn't have used those words, but her initial failure to grasp the difference between Ray Rice and Scott Walker diminishes the real problem of sexism, misogyny and domestic abuse.

If disagreement is violence, if everything is sexist, then eventually nothing will be.

Kirsten Powers writes weekly for USA TODAY.

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