THE CRUSHING BURDEN RAND PAUL HAS TO BEAR IN INTERVIEWS

On CNN a little while ago, Rand Paul told Wolf Blitzer that he doesn't have a problem with female reporters -- he has a problem with reporters of both genders:

"I think I've been universally short tempered and testy with both male and female reporters. I'll own up to that," Paul said.

And you know what really, really rankles him? The fact that, during satellite interviews on TV, he can't see the interviewer:

"And it's hard sometimes. As you know, like during our interview right now, I'm looking only at a camera and it's hard to have a true interaction sometimes, particularly if it's a hostile interviewer and so I do think that interviews should be questions and not necessarily editorializing."

Paul said if he's been interviewed by someone who's editorializing "you feel somewhat at a loss on the other end. You can't see the person who you think is mischaracterizing a position and not really asking a question."

May I respond to that?

Boo freaking hoo.

First of all, news organizations don't put Rand Paul and only Rand Paul in this special sensory-deprivation situation. Every satellite interviewee has to go through the same I-can't-see-the-interviewer thing. And oddly enough, quite a few of them manage it with a degree of politeness and civility, even when asked tough questions by an unseen interviewer (or fellow interviewee).

But beyond that, I just want to remind Senator Paul that ordinary people frequently have to deal with a similar technology that deprives us of the opportunity to look into the eyes of the person talking to us. That technology is called "the telephone." Many of us deal with bosses, clients, businesses we have disputes with, doctors' offices, customer service representatives, and others over the telephone -- all without seeing the faces of the people we're talking to. Just like Rand Paul in those interviews that make him so cranky! And sometimes our interactions make us cranky too! And yet many of us manage not to lash out at bosses or service techs or the seventh so-called customer service person to transfer our call.

(There's another technology called "email" that also deprives us of face-to-face contact. And there's "texting." We use these technologies, and most of the time we somehow manage not to fly off the handle, despite not seeing a human face while using them. I don't know how the heck we do it!)

Rand Paul is a spoiled brat and a whiner. He thinks he's the most put-upon person who ever lived -- this despite the fact that he chose to run for the Senate and then the presidency, and did so as a politician who deliberately courts controversy. Want to avoid all this pain, senator? Get a real job. Go back to being a full-time ophthalmologist. Stop demanding sympathy because you went into politics and it turned out not to be beanbag.