Maine Gov. Paul LePage Solves All His Problems With One Weird Trick: Will Never Talk To Press Again
Those are my juniper bushes! Clear off!
Maine Governor Paul LePage has finally figured out how to keep mean reporters from unfairly portraying him as a stupid racist with a hair-trigger temper whenever they record and report exactly what he says: He will become a hermit and never speak to reporters ever again. Of course, to really make sure he isn't unfairly portrayed accurately, he may also have to stop calling up state legislators and screaming obscenities at them, but he's still working out the details.
LePage declared Wednesday morning he would not resign, and that he doesn't need any kind of "professional help," because there is nothing wrong with him, nothing at all, and it's YOU people who are all insane and trying to take his magic bag:
LePage announced that he would seek “spiritual guidance” with his wife and children.
But he said he would not seek “professional help” as Democrats had been urging him to do.
“I’m not an alcoholic and I’m not a drug addict and I don’t have mental issues,” LePage said. “What I have is a backbone, and I want to move Maine forward.”
Were we not completely untainted by cynicism, we would almost say we detect a teensy bit of mockery in the Boston Globe's tone right here:
Speaking to reporters, LePage vowed that he would that he would never again speak to the media, whom he accused of stoking controversies.
“I will no longer speak to the press ever again after today,” he said.
“And I’m serious. Everything will be put into writing. I’m tired of being caught in the gotcha moments.”
LePage made the announcement following a meeting with Democratic state Rep. Drew Gattine, whose voicemail captured the governor's obscene rant last week. The two apparently managed not to resort to dueling. LePage apologized to Gattine for the message, but explained his outburst was actually a reporter's fault:
“After speaking with Representative Gattine, I think that the reporter who put the mic in my face owes the people of Maine an apology as well, because [Gattine] never called me racist,” LePage told reporters. “He said I made racially [charged] comments. Maybe, in my mind, it is semantics. But in his mind, after talking to him, it was clear that there was a real difference. Fine.”
LePage conceded that he may have responded the same way had Gattine’s comment been portrayed accurately “because race bothers me, because I try to help minorities.”
That certainly helps explain why LePage then went on, a full day after screaming at Gattine's voicemail, to tell reporters that black and Hispanic drug dealers are the "enemy," and need to be shot:
A bad guy is a bad guy. I don’t care what color he is. When you go to war, if you know the enemy, the enemy dresses in red and you dress in blue, you shoot at red. … You shoot at the enemy. You try to identify the enemy. And the enemy right now, the overwhelming majority of people coming in are people of color or people of Hispanic origin.
Unfortunately, since he was no longer speaking to reporters as of right then, LePage didn't elaborate on how the presence of reporters forces him to spontaneously explode in temper tantrums that happen to be caught on camera.
LePage at least seems to recognize he can't be trusted to open his mouth in front of cameras and microphones, even though he attributes his impulse control problems to the recording devices that Gotcha him every single time. If everything's in writing, everything should be swell, with no gotchas at all.
Yr Wonkette is eagerly anticipating LePage's inevitable press release announcing that members of the press are hereby uninvited from his birthday party, and that furthermore he can't hear them, la la la la la.
[ Boston Globe via The Hill / Politico ]