Can you imagine if a conservative TV host interrupted a black woman journalist, instructing her to change the way she said something that was not to his linguistic liking? The cries of racial condescension and sexism would echo through the land.
So will Chris Matthews pay a price in the liberal media for the way he treated April Ryan on this evening's Hardball? When Ryan, of American Urban Radio Networks, described Rudy Giuliani as "pro-abortion," Matthews interrupted her: "abortion rights. Pro-abortion rights . . . I don't like [Ryan's] way." The gracious Ryan actually apologized: "I'm sorry."
Question: is it possible to be pro-abortion rights without being pro-abortion in at least some situations?
APRIL RYAN: I'm going to tell you something, for all intents and purposes a lot of people are saying it's over: Rubio is not even a factor. I talked to David [inaudible], Democratic scholar. He's like, you know, it's Hillary and Trump. And Rubio may as well -- I wouldn't even see him as a vice-presidential nod for Trump, if Trump is the nominee, which looks like it could be. And unfortunately, you know, Donald Trump is showing, and the Republican party is trying to pull together all this minority luster. They've got it for Donald Trump, which we can't believe, because Donald Trump has Rudy Giuliani behind him, who is pro-gay, he's also pro-abortion --
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Abortion rights. Pro-abortion rights.
MATT SCHLAPP [Chairman of American Conservative Union]: I like the way she said it.
MATTHEWS: I don't like it that way.
RYAN: I'm sorry.
