Possumblog

Day Late, etc.

Well, we sorta got an apology. Not the one I would like to have heard, though:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. John Kerry apologized Wednesday for a "poorly stated joke," which the Massachusetts senator says was aimed at the president but was widely perceived as a slam on U.S. troops.

"I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted to wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform, and I personally apologize to any service member, family member or American who was offended," he said in a written statement. [...]

"I regret my words were misinterpreted to wrongly imply" isn't the same as "I regret I said something that could be misinterpreted." The former implies it is the fault of the hearer, rather than the fault of the speaker, and there are a LOT of military personnel who took it exactly the wrong way. It is rather more along the lines of 'I regret you're too dim to get the joke, but since you didn't, I'm sorry. That you're so dim.'

By apologizing in this unstraightforward way, he once again belittles the intelligence of the people who were able to listen to the sound-bite themselves and drew their own conclusions about what he meant.

He now says he will return to Washington to fight some more, where one hopes he will be safe from further searing, self-inflicted wounds.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at November 1, 2006 04:46 PM