Leave the Conways alone

If a senior Obama aide had a husband who went on Fox News to yell about Benghazi, would liberals constantly ask her about his opinions?

Kellyanne and George Conway.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, Alex Wong/Getty Images)

"Does your husband know you're here, madam?" This is not quite a direct quote from Wolf Blitzer's recent interview with Kellyanne Conway on CNN, but it is pretty close to the spirit, if not the letter. What Blitzer wanted to know, basically, was why the senior counselor to President Trump has spent the last few years disagreeing with her husband, George, an attorney who dislikes his wife's boss and has sometimes expressed these views on television and social media. Is this bad for their marriage? "I know that there are issues there," Blitzer said.

Conway's response has been roundly criticized and hyped as emotive, unhinged, hysterical, in the way that women's responses to most things tend to be when they are not entitled to the protection of the liberal media establishment. (The reliably feminist bitcoining platform Salon led the way with "Kellyanne Conway erupts," as if a woman daring to contradict Blitzer was some kind of dangerous gas-driven weather event rather than a normal response to a question from a journalist.) I could not disagree more. In my opinion Conway was admirably restrained. If she'd had a glass of wine handy, there would have been a well-earned spot for it just above Blitzer's signature white beard.

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Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.