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Well, unlike Sidney's usual superb insights, this article offers little new and seems like a subchapter in a book. It's got some nifty (and weird) anecdotes (that dress!) but shows little of the thoughtfulness and cut-through-the-fog-edness of Sidney's usual work. (Everyone's entitled to a medicore day.)
Still, I don't think Sidney was being sexist, rather, perhaps he didn't take his argument far enough.
What does strike me (as it may have other LWs) is that unlike Cheney, Rove and the other male advisors, Bush may listen to his female advisors/syncophants but barely. He listens to them fawn over him, but apparently little else. Or perhaps nothing is offered. They are, as others have noted previously, almost substitute wives (calling Fay Weldon!). They seem not allowed to make policy at the same level. They don't ask the questions that need to be asked and answered. They don't use their face time with W. as purposefully as do the aforementioned men.
That said, Rice is no Albright. She is not even Jeanne Kirkpatrick. (Both of whom came from academia, as did she.) But then her boss is no Clinton, for better or worse.
