"I was sorry before I was for it" - The Mea Culpa Syndrome

















Guests on this week's Gang-up:
Susan Page, Washington bureau chief for "USA Today"
Michael Duffy, assistant managing editor, TIME magazine.
Todd Purdum, "Vanity Fair".

Politicians are not the only people born with the propensity to put a foot in their mouths every now and then, although some seem to have an innate ability. Of course, the DR Show, which according to the screener "can't take" my call today, towed the line the rest of the media is towing regarding Sen. Kerry's latest podiatric accomplishment.

Sen. Kerry insulted those members of our society who are voluntarily serving, not "stuck" in Iraq. The so-called apology issued by Sen. Kerry is as much an apology as a further insult. First, we fail to see what the original joke was. Second, he insults our intelligence, which obviously he believes we do not have, by telling us it was a "botched joke".

But this latest flap and apology "dance and pony show" is only indicative of two things. One is the double standard applied to Democrats, and second, the very state of the Democratic Party.

Had a Republican made the same comment he would have to go on a two-week tour of public apologies plus he would be required to resign whatever position he or she would hold. Compare statements and apologies by other Democratic Party members and you'll see - if you are honest with yourself - Biden about Pakistanis, Clinton on Indians and so on. But that is not the big issue.

The issue is how apologies have become political and PR tools, not signs of real remorse and repentance. At one time a political party will see demanding an apology as a way to humiliate an opponent, at another time when applied to them an apology may be issued but without a real admission of wrong doing. Most political apologies today are issued "if anyone has been offended." There is no real conscientious admission of having issued an objective offense. In other words, an offense can be uttered knowingly, and then one issues a conditional apology to save some face while the offense remains not purged.

But in the case of Sen. Kerry what we see is a clear pattern of disdain not only for a branch of service of which he has hoped to be Commander-in-Chief, but mostly for those who actually filled its ranks. But the otherwise humorless and sanctimonious "politically correct" crowd now pretends that we see a joke where there was none but upper class condescension.

What I find really stunning and a threat to the democracy we all love as liberals is how partisan the media has become. It is not even hidden anymore.

Last week the hoopla was about Mr. Mathew J. Fox and statements that Rush Limbaugh did not actually made. Ms. Rehm was rightfully indignant but only based on the information she got from her community of colleagues in the media. Now she takes the word of The New York Times and without the same level of indignation she felt for comments that Limbaugh did not make she uncritically accepts the hook, line and sinker of the Kerry camp. I am disappointed.

Republicans or conservatives put their foot in their mouth and they have to go on "apology tours" and even resign their posts as if we lived in the USSR. Democrats put their foot in their mouth and we get an apology "if we are offended" because we are so dumb we probably have just "misinterpreted" their jokes, their high class sense of humor. The Democratic Party is no longer the party of immigrants, working and middle classes. It has become the party of power at whatever cost.

In the meantime, history will have the last laugh. Mr. Kerry can forget about his presidential aspirations.