Tammy Bruce: It’s time to stop accepting them.
In the normal world, accepting an apology is the classy thing to do. We all do make mistakes, and the apology ritual is one that allows people to forgive and forget, and move on.
This is all well and good if the issue at hand truly was a “mistake” delivered by someone of good will. When dealing with partisan liberals, however, neither of those apply.
Arguing for harm to come to someone because you disagree with them is neither a mistake nor an accident. It’s a contemplated idea, cultivated into a message and delivered as an argument. Targeting a toddler for derision because it serves a political agenda isn’t something that mistakenly pops into someone’s head. It springs from an existing loathsome well.
It would be valuable for today’s conservative leadership to recognize that comments like Mr. Bashir’s and Ms. Harris-Perry’s aren’t mistakes — they are public illustrations of what sits at the core of today’s liberalism — hatred, paranoia and cruelty.
Romney should have said something like “While I wouldn’t be so ungracious as to accept an apology, it’s worth pointing out that this was not an isolated incident. It’s just the latest outburst of lies and calumny against me and my family that have been coming from the left ever since I had the temerity to run against Barack Obama for president.”
Did Karl Rove ever apologize for attacking or insulting John McCain’s adopted bengali daughter?
Did Rush Limbaugh ever apologize for attacking Chelsea Clinton when she was 13?
You are really boring
Well, incandescent stupidity does have a certain entertainment value. Every village has an idiot (sometimes more than one). Douchenozzle is ours.
Did Michelle Obama ever apologize for fat shaming her own daughter on national TV?
What was said about Romney and Palin at MSNBC was far beyond what people call an insult. One person wanted people to defecate in Palin’s mouth as punishment for saying our debt is too big and the MHP lead a panel of racist attacks against the Romneys for daring to not living up to the racist charicature by adopting a baby who wasn’t white.
It is long past time for the progressive standard beaers to stop with all of the racist stereotypes and attacks. Equality comes when people don’t see race, when they are colorblind, not when races are endlessly pitted against each other.
Rush never insulted Chelsea Clinton like you claim. That is nothing more than leftist agitprop like the whole Tina Fey “I can see Russia fro my Front Porch” bullshit being attributed to Palin:
http://lyingliar.com/?p=17
On his TV show in 1992, a few days after the Presidential election, Rush Limbaugh was reviewing In/Out lists (a popular fad at the time):
In today’s New York Daily News right here… it’s the obligatory in-out list. Every time there’s a massive change somewhere, people are in, people are out. I’m now out. It says about me on here, Rush Limbaugh, loud-mouthed conservative and Bush favorite. He’s out.
Rush commented that most of the other things on the days’ list were not funny, but that “one of them in particular” was. Rush quoted from the David Hinckley article
“In: A cute kid in the White House. Out: Cute dog in the White House.”
Could– could we see the cute kid? Let’s take a look at– see who is the cute kid in the White House.
A picture of the “cute dog” (Millie) appeared on the screen instead of the “cute kid” (Chelsea).
Rush immediately said
No, no, no. That’s not the kid.
Then a picture of Chelsea Clinton came on the screen and Rush said
That’s– that’s the kid.
Rush apologized several times and told a story about how he had learned early in his career the importance of not making fun of someone’s appearance. He then apologized again and said
I’m– I hope you will forgive me. I’m fatigued. I’m tired…
Before breaking to a commercial, Rush asked the audience what he could do to make amends for the incident and, in an odd, spontaneous joke, proceeded to spank himself.
Was Rush trying to make the most of a mistake, or was the whole thing scripted—apologies and all? The fact that Franken had to use a fake version of events to argue his case tells us a lot. The real version has Rush talking about a “cute dog” as well as a “cute kid,” obviously not a set-up for calling the kid a dog.
It is not an assault on Chelsea, as her picture only comes up in the context of correcting the error.
Franken set up a fake joke, falsely accused Rush of trying to tell it and then complained that the joke would only make sense if Rush put up the picture on purpose. The question of, “what picture was supposed to come up?” is not ironclad, it is ironic. Rush replaced the picture.
Rush has always maintained the incident was an accident. On his show four days later, Rush offered an explanation to his audience. First, the show played, “Who’s sorry now” in the background and Limbaugh pointed to himself. Then he said:
Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry. Let me tell you very quickly what happened last Friday night. There was a new in list and new out list that was published in the newspaper. The writer said in, cute kid in the White House; out, cute dog in the White House. Could we show the cute dog in the White House who’s out, and they put up a picture of Chelsea Clinton back in the crew. And many of you people think that we did it on purpose to make a cheap comment on her appearance. And I’m terribly sorry. I don’t–look, that takes no talent whatsoever and I have a lot of talent. I don’t need to get laughs by commenting on people’s looks, especially a young child who’s done nothing wrong. I mean, she can’t control the way she looks. And we really–we do not–we do not do that on this kind of show. So put a picture up of her now and so we can square this.
They then showed the picture of Chelsea Clinton. She had a displeased look on her face, as if to show that she was not too happy with the mistake.
Rush continued:
All right. We’re sorry. We didn’t intend to hurt her feelings. We’ll be back with our final segment right after this. Don’t go away.
This apology offers considerable insight into what happened. Rush indicates that he had asked to see the “cute dog”. That is not what happened on the show, but is probably what had been planned–which explains why Rush has it backward. If Rush was supposed to ask to see the “cute dog” first, that would explain why the technician put up the picture. They had it cued first. In addition, if they had the pictures cued according to the names “Chelsea” and “Millie,” it is even easier to see how a mistake could have happened. Both are female names and like most of America at the time, the technician probably did not know Chelsea by name.
As for Franken’s question of why, if it was an accident, Rush did not fix the problem, the actual context again has the answer. Rush corrected the initial error right away and apologized several times– thereby fixing the problem. There was no need to go back and re-tape a different sequence of events. Mistakes that don’t violate FCC regulations are routinely left in TV talk shows, most notably late-night shows like Jay Leno or Conan O’Brien or Rush Limbaugh’s show.
Besides, Rush gave us his reasoning in 1990 after an embarrassing incident had occurred when he was hosting a show for Pat Sajak. Rush said,
Since I as a broadcaster on radio and now on television believe in behaving in an honest fashion, not faking anything and allowing whatever happens to happen, uh, you saw what happened… Many other shows would have attempted to keep you from seeing what happened in this studio tonight. It happened; we don’t hide behind it…
It is worth noting that, interestingly, there was an incident– in 1993– where Rush did discuss Chelsea Clinton’s appearance. Here’s what he said:
You know, she’s [Hillary Clinton] got an interview out in Redbook magazine that just came out this week. And in it she says that she thinks it’s very childish of shows like “Saturday Night Live” to make fun of Chelsea. And I agree. I mean, I don’t think you should take shots at a little kid, especially the way a little kid looks and… Well, they do it on “Saturday Night Live” and they’re really mean and vicious about it. And I think that it’s worth pointing out that the liberals who run “Saturday Night Live” are the ones doing that. They always say that people like me make fun of the way people look, and we haven’t done that; and-and so she [Hillary] talks about that…
(Rush Limbaugh TV Show, February 12, 1993)
What, you may ask, was Rush talking about? Well, a Saturday Night Live skit had Madonna making a sexual advance toward Chelsea Clinton (played by a dressed-up Julia Sweeney, the actress who also played the androgynous character “Pat”). It was outrageous. The following is from a transcript of the show, which aired on 1/16/1993:
[Clinton gives Madonna the “Call Me!” signal again, but she shakes hr fingers “No, no”, and acknowledges Chelsea instead, who is pleasantly surprised by the outcome]
Yes, Hillary had in fact complained about Saturday Night Live, where her daughter’s appearance was being viciously mocked.
As you may recall, whether he was directly involved in the skit or not, Al Franken was a cast member, a writer and a co-producer for the show at the time they were making fun of Chelsea’s appearance– when Hillary complained about it.
You need to apologize to Rush or we will forever refer to you as ‘Hypocrite’ on this forum.
I’m pretty sure that Rush doesn’t give a damn what anonymous trolls like Douchenozzle write about him on the Internet.
You need to apologize to Rush or we will forever refer to you as ‘Hypocrite’ on this forum.
Concur. I’m sure he’ll apologize any moment…
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/03/15/flashback-when-rush-limbaughs-hate-was-televise/184523
You can view it as a “Mistake”, it sure looks like it was just another gag for him.
Amg that was sooo horrible what a terribul person totally equivalent to MHP being upset about the races mixing and Bashir calling for someone to shit in Palin’s mouth.
Why don’t you hold your own to the same standard that you hold others to? Do you even know anyone that is conservative or libertarian in meatspace? Go out and meet some new people and challenge your world view.
Well, if Media Matters thinks he did it, that is certain proof of his innocence. They wouldn’t know the truth if it bit them on the ass.
And they are simply repeating the same lie. the post I provided explains everything but then you have to bother to read it.
Assume your explanation is true.
His audience clapped and applauded when he did it.
THat’s a pretty sad commentary on his audience.
So now the excuse for not apologizing is because of the audience? I think the hypocrite label is sticking.
They didn’t applaud when the picture of the dog came up. They applauded when Rush said, “That’s the cute kid.” after the picture of Chelsea came up. One could easily interpret that as applause for Chelsea.
I don’t know if it was intentional or not nor would I be surprised if it was. Saying someone’s kid is ugly is bad form but it surely isn’t equivalent nor does it excuse what we repeatedly see from MSNBC and other leftists in media.
And if you are sincere and think that what Rush did was reprehensible, then you must be really outraged by MHP right?
Have you ever considered apologizing to Prof. Mann?
Have you ever considered asking a non-idiotic question?
So you don’t think you owe Professor Mann an Apology?
Yet another stupid question. If I thought I owed him an apology, I would have offered him an apology, you moron.
You really want to get banned from here don’t you?
It ain’t easy but it can be done.
It never ceases to amaze me how many different ways the left has of saying “Look, Squirrel!”
Well, I do think Rand and Mark Steyn should probably apologize to Jerry Sandusky, who never tried to mislead the entire world into throwing away trillions of dollars of economic potential, forever locking the Third World into grinding poverty, just to satisfy his ego. All Sandusky did was molest less than a hundred children. He never conspired to fire editors, hide data, hijack journals, malign anyone who disagreed with him on any point (such as calling Georgia Tech climatologist Judith Curry a “serial climate disinformer”), or derail what has become the flagship program in all of science, turning it into a bug-eyed self-righteous religious cult that is the antithesis of the scientific method and undermines the intellectual freedoms cherished since the Enlightenment.
Did Mann ever apologize to anyone for using the term denier? Did anyone ever sue Mann for calling names? Why don’t Mann and his deciples hold themselves to the same standard they hold others?
If it weren’t for double standards, they’d have no standards at all.
Have you ever considered apologizing blah, blah, blah
Have you ever considered apologizing for inviting yourself into someone’s living room and defecating all over the furniture, while at the same time effectively competing for the world championship of dull?
Shouldn’t you be apologizing to Rand?
They only ‘apologised’ because they were caught out. I agree with Bruce, they just went through the apology ritual and Palin and Romney let them off the hook.
MHP looked sincere but time will tell if she stops her racist attacks. It could really be an awakening that Republicans or any white person who doesn’t follow her ideology isn’t some monster who wants to enslave people with brown skin and other racist stereotypes she pushes on her show.
Lying comes as naturally to the left as mass murder.
Todd Palin must have incredible self-restraint. If someone said those things about my wife or kids, they’d be in need of extensive dental work and plastic surgery. In the old days, he’d challenge them to a duel. Let’s see, an Alaska oil worker up against a metrosexual media worker. Who would win? Who would win?
Perhaps that why they get so vicious and personal with their attacks – they know they risk almost nothing.
“I agree with Bruce, they just went through the apology ritual and Palin and Romney let them off the hook.”
Yep. Agreed.
And you know this for a lot of reasons but one is that After Bashir’s moronic uttering,s it happened again.
And it will happen yet again….
An insincere apology is itself an insult: “Look what you’re sucker enough to buy!” . And while the impulse to ‘rise above it all’ and ‘look like the good guy’ can be strong, the past twenty years has shown pretty strongly that accepting the fake apologies of the Left only encourages more bad behavior. In the real world, the other name for the guy who shows how big he is by accepting apologies when he gets hit is… the guy who gets hit a lot. Hit back, hit hard, and hit disproportionately; to paraphrase Joel Rosenberg, you can’t teach barbarians that it’s not RIGHT to attack you but you can teach them that it’s not SMART.