Internish evidence

Joel Pett/Lexington Herald-Leader. Via Down With Tyranny.

Senator Paul Meets the Press (via PoliticsUSA):

Well, you know, I mean the Democrats one of their big issues is they have concocted and says Republicans are committing a war on women. One of the workplace laws and rules that I think are good is that bosses shouldn’t prey on young interns in their office, and I think really the media seems to have given President Clinton a pass on this.

You see what he did here, right? Beyond the fact that, like Sarah Palin, he doesn't speak in sentences because he doesn't have a message to transmit as much as an attitude of equal parts paranoia and spite and because his English isn't very good.

He has no intention of discussing any of the issues revolving around the alleged Republican War on Women (though he personally happens to be in moderately good odor on this front himself at the moment, having signed onto Kirsten Gillebrand's effort to do [jump]
something about the epidemic of sexual assault in the military, but some of his base, or his papa's, might not relish his going into that), so he'll just ignore the question and talk about Democrats instead. As an inveterate plagiarist, he'll recycle some language from his senatorial campaign of 2010, when he responded to a critique from Bill Clinton on the economic issues with a personal attack on the ex-president's morals of 15 years before:

"I'm not sure I would trust a guy who had had sexual relations with an intern .... They complain they want all these workplace rules. Do you think there ought to be a law against having, using the prerogatives of your position and your power, of your job, to have relations with an intern? I think that's disgusting." (www.kentucky.com, October 11 2010)

But instead of making it an attack on Bill Clinton this time, he'll make it an attack on David Gregory, his desperate-to-please interrogator: why does the press constantly harp on Republicans? Are you guys biased, or what?

Let's just see...

Whilst a majority of the Senate chamber and news commentators questioned Clinton’s morality in the aftermath of the scandal, the American public remained steadfast in its support for the Clinton presidency. (GenderAcrossBorders)

The anti-Clinton animus of the bluntly right-wing media requires no special explanation.... The more interesting question is, How to understand the venom of The New York Times' editorial page editor Howell Raines, once closely aligned with the civil rights movement (Todd Gitlin/Washington Monthly)

many major news outlets emphasized a supposition that turned out not to be provable–namely that the memo was written by agents of the President and represented a smoking gun proving obstruction of justice or witness-tampering. That supposition may have reflected the suspicions of some investigators but it proved to be unsupportable. (Pew Research Journalism Project) 

Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel.... found a consistent pro-prosecution bias in the Lewinsky coverage, a voracious appetite for conflict and scandal and a zeal for policing the sex lives of political candidates that alienated the public. (James B. Stewart, New York Times)

QUESTION: Do you think there has been too much coverage of the allegations about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky in the news media, about the right amount, or too little?

Media Coverage of Allegations of Affair
Too much Right amount Too little		72% 22% 4%

QUESTION: Overall, do you feel the news media have acted responsibly or irresponsibly in this matter?

Have Media Acted Responsibly?
Yes No		37% 55%

(CNN)

That's just the first five cut-and-past–able items from the first page of 1.32 million Google results. So I'm not altogether clear, if the media gave Clinton a pass, what kind of pass it might have been.

I guess when it all went down back in the 1990s Rand Paul was too busy with his imaginary taxpayers association (used to give himself awards and urge himself to run for Senate) to look much at the newspapers. What Paul uses interns for, of course, is to help out with his general program of spreading misinformation, like posing as a Daily Kos member urging progressives to vote against Paul's Democratic opponent. And to crib his speeches for him, right? No abuse of power there, hardly.