Thursday, November 2, 2006
apologies
I once worked for someone who had - for want of a better way to put it - unfelicitous relationships with many staff members. When he would reduce someone to abject fury and/or tears he would invariably shake his head and say "I'm so sorry you feel bad" and then be puzzled when the furious or upset person was even angrier or more upset. Likewise, Jon Cary. ("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.") For one thing, the whole education thing was ridiculous since he and GWB had similar midling grades at Yale but it was GWB who also earned a Harvard MBA. For another, even grammatical gymnastics make it impossible for the original comment to refer to the President and not to the troops when he said that "education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq". But bottom line, what kind of apology is it to lay the problem at the feet of "misinterpretation" and "implication" and "being offended"?
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