The Rand Paul has a problem with women meme.

I've watched the clip of Paul with Savannah Guthrie on "The Today Show," and it shouldn't be that big of a deal, but it is, and now any time Paul talks over a female, we'll hear about it and this meme will grow. Rand Paul has his response: He's "pretty equal opportunity." He's "been universally short tempered and testy" � toward males and females � and he needs "to get better at holding my tongue and holding my temper."

That's a good answer. Equality is a great concept, and women mostly want equality, and, I think, most men want equality for women. But in real life, rudeness toward women is perceived differently. For one thing, it was traditional for more respect to be shown to women, so we � some of us � notice its absence. And the reaction well, but I'm an asshole to everybody doesn't satisfy those who want a culture of civility.

But even for those of us who don't want special sensitivity to women and who think it will hurt women's opportunities � in journalism, in politics, and elsewhere � we observe how well women are treated with an understanding of what has gone on in the past when women were subordinated and diminished and dissuaded from entering the fray. (I had a high school English teacher who asserted with confidence that women could never work as broadcast journalists because our voices were unsuitable to the medium.) With that background understanding, what is objectively equal treatment may feel unequal.

Of course, it's also true that Rand Paul has his opponents who will use whatever works, and I fully expect them to accuse him of sexism whenever they can now. Once it's a meme, that's how it goes. If he remains "short tempered and testy," whatever hits women will be highlighted as Rand Paul's problem with women. If he manages to take the edge off, because he's trying "to get better," what niceness is aimed at women will be characterized as patronizing and even exclusionary. His opponents will want to box him in. Whatever he does will be wrong.

Feeble contradictions in the sidebar.

Found, just now, at New York Magazine...



So, what do you think: Will acting like a nice person go well for you or badly?

"The Indiana he knew as a kid was completely homophobic. Take my word for it."

Said Meade, upon hearing Letterman's "David Letterman's Top Ten Guys Indiana Governor Mike Pence Looks Like" routine, which begins: "This is not the Indiana I remember as a kid. I lived there for 27 years, and folks were folks, and that�s all there was to it. We all breathed the same air, we were all carbon-based life forms. We didn�t care."



Meade was born in Indiana in 1954 and lived there until 1971. "I don't remember anyone, ever, saying it's okay to be gay or that you should treat gay people the same as anyone else. The only thing I ever heard was disparaging or it was joked about and behind the joking was pretty thinly veiled fear. There were no 'out' gays." Meade called Letterman "delusional" and repeats something I said the other day: "Stop otherizing Indiana."

I'm going to defend Letterman a bit, even though I'm sure Meade is right about  Hoosiers and homosexuality in the 1950s. One thing is, Letterman makes no effort to understand what RFRA actually says and how it is likely to work in practice: "Honestly, I don't know what [Mike Pence] is talking about." He's operating at a higher level of abstraction, where Hoosiers are stereotypically friendly and nice to everybody. That's what he remembers, and that is the Hoosier brand. Ironically, Mike Pence � in his disastrous turn on ABC's "This Week" � relied on the same branding:

Hoosier -- come on. Hoosiers don't believe in discrimination. I mean the way I was raised, in a small town in Southern Indiana, is you're -- you're kind and caring and respectful to everyone. Anybody that's been in Indiana for five minutes knows that Hoosier hospitality is not a slogan, it's a reality. People tell me when I travel around the country, gosh, I went -- I went to your state and people are so nice....

Yeah, you're the nice people... unlike those people in other states. Well, I just have 2 things to say about that: 1. You're otherizing the people of the other states who have to be less nice for it to be noticeable that your people are so nice, 2. Niceness is a superficial quality, and it's a quality that makes it hard to tell whether the seemingly nice person thinks ill of you or not. Those stereotypical Hoosiers might hate your kind. How would you know?

By the way, has David Letterman ever said disparaging things about gay people on his show? All the jokes in there over the years, going back to the "Tonight" show appearances? I think it would be extraordinary if he didn't. Mocking gay people was, of course, absolutely the norm for Johnny Carson, who expected and got endless laughs over men who are � his words � "light in [their] loafers."

AND: The "Guys Indiana Governor Mike Pence Looks Like" routine isn't consistent with an ethic of friendly kindness and equality. You put up a picture of a man and then throw 10 shots at him for the way he looks. Letterman made a point of not even attempting to understand what Pence was talking about. Let's just make fun of how he looks. Letterman was teaching us that it's just fine to have a gut reaction to a person, to reject the stage in human relations where you see things from the other person's point of view, and to mock him for superficial reasons that have no substance at all.

IN THE COMMENTS: Laslo Spatula came up with 2 answers to my question "By the way, has David Letterman ever said disparaging things about gay people on his show?"

1. In 2011, Letterman joked about Rosie O'Donnell: "The woman she is marrying, her fianc�e, was driving... and her car broke down. And guess what happened? Rosie pulls up right behind her in her tow truck." Rosie wondered what motivated him and added: "I don't remember making fun of you when you had sex with all your interns, Dave. I didn't do that. I didn't make fun of your rampant, throbbing heterosexuality, did I Dave?"

2. In 2008, Letterman had a Top 10 list of "things Jim Carrey will always say 'yes' to" including "A Fan Asking for a Hug, Unless He's a Dude" and then a shot Carrey taking a bath with Larry King and Letterman saying "Those guys are so gay!"