Oy. So Rand Paul
had a bad morning on the TV, when he got testily obnoxious and all mansplaining about how to do journalism with Savannah Guthrie. "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no," he screeched at her. "Listen, you've editorialized. Let me answer a question. You ask a question, and you say, 'Have your views changed?' instead of editorializing and saying my views have changed."
In a later interview, Paul further explains how journalists are allowed to cover him.
In an interview in New Hampshire with The New York Times, after the appearance on "Today," Mr. Paul said he gets tired of questions with the built-in premise that he has contradicted himself. Questions, he said, like "'O.K., well we understand that you've been beating your wife for years and you've flip-flopped on 25 different issues and you used to believe this and you used to believe that,'" he said. "That isn't journalism."
Funny thing is, when it was
Sean Hannity asking about the same flip-flops, Paul didn't blow up. He answered. Lamely, but he answered. So Hannity asking about the same things as Guthrie must have been journalism, while Guthrie asking about it was "editorializing." You could chalk it up to the fact that it was Hannity and Fox News, or you could look at Paul's
previous testy interactions with female journalists. Like when CNBC's Kelly Evans asked him about a tax incentive proposal he came up with for U.S. companies to bring their overseas profits back to the United States and about his position on vaccination.
"Senator, I'm sure you know that most of the research on this indicates that this actually costs more money over the long term than they save," Evans said. "Are you saying your plan will be different?"
"That's incorrect," Paul said. "Let's go back again. Your premise and your question is mistaken."
In the same interview, the senator shushed Evans when she asked him about comments he made about vaccines, which he called "voluntary."
"Let me finish. Hey, Kelly, shh," Paul said. "Calm down a bit here, Kelly. Let me answer the question."
"Let me correct you." "Calm down." "Hush." When Hannity later
asked him about vaccines, no interruptions, no blow-ups. Just an answer. Now, Paul is
notoriously prickly when it comes to the press, but he sure does seem to save his lecturing and his interrupting and his condescension for the women of the press.
This campaign is only a few days old, officially, but it's tone sure has been set.