The nature of an apology

  • This is worth going over, just because the Legacy Media and John McCain seem con­fused on the mat­ter: Why did Dick Durbin apol­o­gize? Because he’s a great guy? Because he had a change of heart? Because he is always look­ing to pro­mote har­mony and bi-partisanship?

    Nnnnno. Because it was good pol­i­tics to apol­o­gize.

    Wall St. Journal’s Opin­ion­Jour­nal Best of the Web quotes a Ras­mus­san poll out June 22:

    Only 20% of the 1,000 likely vot­ers in the sur­vey “believe pris­on­ers at Guan­tanamo Bay have been treated unfairly.” Thirty-four per­cent think the treat­ment of the pris­on­ers is “about right,” and 36% think Amer­ica is treat­ing them “bet­ter than they deserve”:

    “The sur­vey also found that just 14% agree with peo­ple who say that pris­oner treat­ment at Guan­tanamo Bay is sim­i­lar to Nazi tac­tics. Sixty-nine per­cent dis­agree with that com­par­i­son. This helps explain why Illi­nois Sen­a­tor Dick Durbin apol­o­gized for mak­ing such a comparison. “

    Even among Democ­rats, only 30% think the Guan­tanamo pris­on­ers are being treated unfairly. In other words, many Demo­c­ra­tic elected offi­cials are out of touch not only with Amer­i­cans in gen­eral but with a major­ity of their own supporters.

    In other words, vir­tu­ally nobody agreed with what he said. So he took it back.

    Except of course he didn’t. Durbin first apol­o­gized to Holo­caust sur­vivors — who by the way do not con­sti­tute 69% of the coun­try — and then said that IF any­one took offense by what he said or thought that there was a slight to our mil­i­tary implied, he was hereby apol­o­giz­ing to those people.

    I’m sorry but that’s not an apol­ogy. It’s just pure com­mon sense. Sup­pose your 10-year-old son had said his lit­tle brother smelled like a wet poo­dle, and you told him to apol­o­gize. Sup­pose he then spent one hour pre­tend­ing like he didn’t hear you, one hour telling you that you must’ve heard other peo­ple say­ing that he said it, and one hour telling you that those imag­i­nary peo­ple were being stu­pid and mean. If he then struck a pose on the kitchen floor and said, “If you thought that my words meant any­thing bad, then … y’know … sorry. And by the way, I LIKE poo­dles,” would you EVER con­sider that an apol­ogy? An apol­ogy begins with “I am” and ends with “sorry.” If it con­tains dis­claimers and con­di­tions, it’s not an apol­ogy, it’s a jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. Hoo boy. I think there are many Democ­rats who sin­cerely hope that there aren’t many good par­ents out there.

    For a bet­ter bit of analy­sis, though, here’s more from that same Opin­ion­Jour­nal article:

    What are we to make of all this? The most hope­ful inter­pre­ta­tion is that the Democ­rats are polit­i­cally incom­pe­tent — that they are stu­pidly try­ing to whip up hys­te­ria over Guan­tanamo in hope of scor­ing polit­i­cal points. The other pos­si­bil­ity is that one of America’s two major polit­i­cal par­ties is led by peo­ple who are gen­uinely pas­sion­ate about the “rights” of ter­ror­ists and cor­re­spond­ingly blasé about the dan­gers of terrorism.

    In light of all this, Durbin’s polit­i­cally expe­di­ent “apol­ogy” — even if unsat­is­fac­tory as an apol­ogy — is a good sign. It sug­gests that Democ­rats are play­ing pol­i­tics and com­ing to real­ize it isn’t working.

    Here’s hopin’.


    Related posts:

    1. The deval­u­a­tion of shock

    June 23rd, 2005 | Grace | No Comments |

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