Not sexist, just a jerk.
Presidential candidate Rand Paul has raised some eyebrows with his recent let's-call-it "testy" interviews
with female news anchors. Not that he isn't a jerk to the menfolk anchors too,
as he is quick to point out in his own defense, but there has seemed of late to be a qualitative difference there. Not to worry, though; Paul's wife has been summoned to explain that it couldn't possibly be true
because reasons.
"Absolutely," [Kelley] Paul said. "I mean to me the whole gender angle on that was a bit of a false construct. I mean that's not who Rand is as a person. He wrote the forward in my book and he talks about all of the women in his life. And his whole family is full of strong women."
Paul also noted that one of her husband's longtime business partners was a woman [...]
I do wish we could get past this political trope that says you can immunize yourself from claims of sexism by pointing out that you have wommenfolk in your very own family, or that you cannot be a bigot because you have A Black Friend, or that you cannot possibly be creepily prejudiced against immigrants because your grandpappy was an immigrant and you never hated
his guts or told him to speak English better, when he came 'round for your birthday parties.
Frankly, I don't think the Paul campaign needed to wheel out the damage control squad at all for this one; all he needs to do is not continue to do the thing that raised eyebrows. Easy stuff. "Shushing" female reporters while granting Sean Effing Hannity license to ask the same questions has currently raised eyebrows, yes, but those eyebrows will probably be dropped again so long as Rand Paul does not make a habit of it—and if he does make a habit of it, well now won't that be interesting.
For now, though, 'twas raised eyebrows only. We're at eyebrow elevation stage 3, code yellow; take no action but report suspicious activity to your building supervisor. All he has to do to make it a non-story is not do that thing.