Thursday, May 15, 2008

The art of unapologizing

Hillary Clinton has been getting heat for her racially motivated comments regarding Senator Barack Obama's inability to gain the working-class white vote. Yesterday during an NBC interview with a pillow-tossing Brian Williams, she said she regrets the way other people misinterpreted her comments. The network has since accepted this as an apology.

"I'm sorry you feel that way" wasn't an apology when your kid sister said it. "I'm sorry you're a jerk" wasn't an apology when your kid brother said it. And "I regret how others have interpreted what I said" is not an apology when a disingenuous politician says it.

The fact that Clinton is incapable of taking responsibility for anything she's done or said--be it "confusing" kissing babies during a photo op in Bosnia with running under a hail of sniper fire; using these misrepresentations as the basis for a claim that she has passed the "commander-in-chief threshold"; or saying that her African American opponent is unable to win the white working-class vote--is reason enough to keep the New York Senator as far from the White House as possible. Let's prove as a species that we can learn at least that much from history.