By the time he apologized, online protesters had been organizing for days on social networking Web sites and liberal hubs like Daily Kos. They called on companies like ProFlowers to remove their ads from “The Rush Limbaugh Show” and appeared to be having some success, as companies like Sleep Train said they had suspended advertising....Now, I believe in general principles, and I want to know what the general principle is about accepting apologies. I'd like to nail down people like Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Eric Boehlert, because their candidate, Barack Obama, is one of the greatest purveyors of apologies in the history of the world!
Mr. Limbaugh’s critics dismissed his apology as having been forced by the advertiser pressure. Reflecting those feelings on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, the Democratic National Committee chairwoman, said, “I know he apologized, but forgive me, I doubt his sincerity, given that he lost at least six advertisers.”
Eric Boehlert of the liberal media monitoring group Media Matters for America predicted on Sunday that the apology would not “stop the pressure that’s being applied to his advertisers.”
“His comments were so egregious, naturally advertisers will have doubts about being associated with Limbaugh’s brand of hate,” Mr. Boehlert said in an e-mail message.
Why did Obama apologize for the burning of Korans in Afghanistan? Should his apology be rejected as insincere because it didn't come from pure recognition that Americans had done wrong? Obviously, the apology was motivated by American self-interest. He wanted to stop the violent reaction.
The tendency in recent years has been to demand apologies. But these demands are bogus unless apologies are accepted. Now, some people criticize our culture of apology. Santorum didn't like Obama's apology for the Koran burning.
And Rush Limbaugh is the furthest thing from an apology guy:
February 20, 2012: "Why did Clinton bother with all the public apologies with Jesse Jackson and so forth over the Lewinsky stuff? Because it offended people's sense of decency where it comes to family values. He had to get 'em back."
October 12, 2011: "Leaked cables show Japan nixed a presidential apology to Hiroshima and Nagasaki for using nukes to end the overseas contingency operation known as World War II. Will the next president apologize for the current one? The obsessive need of this president to apologize for American exceptionalism and our defense of freedom continued recently when Barack Obama's State Department (run by Hillary Clinton) contacted the family of al-Qaeda propagandist and recruiter Samir Khan to 'express its condolences' to his family....We apologized for killing a terrorist before he could help kill any more of us. It's yet another part of the world apology tour that began with Obama taking the oath of office to protect and defend the United States and its Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, something he immediately felt sorry for."
January 31, 2011: "[W]e're minding our own business on September 11th; our own airplanes are hijacked by Islamist Muslim radicals, 3,000 people end up dead, and we think we have to reach out to Muslims. Obama gets elected, he goes over there, and gives this speech in Cairo as an apologist for the United States. It's always perplexed me.... Obama has been to Egypt. He apologized for us. He told everybody over there, 'We've been wrong and we're gonna make it right. I'm president now, and we're not gonna do these horrible, rotten things to you that my predecessors have done. I'm apologizing,' and still with Barack Hussein Pharaoh Obama now, President of the United States going into his third year, there's still anti-American sentiment in Egypt. How can this be? Where is the love? Where his the consensus?"
July 22, 2010: "People have asked me about this woman Sarah Spitz, who's now 'apologized,' and they want my reaction to it. And this is another thing I'll react to it but I really don't want to. This bores me as well, this whole concept of forcing people to apologize for things they meant to say. Why is she gonna apologize? She meant to say it, she wrote it, stand by it. You want to watch me die, Sarah? Say it! Where are your guts? Well, she's 'apologized.' 'A producer for an NPR-affiliated radio station has apologized for saying she would 'laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out' if she were to see conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh suffering a heart attack."
Why apologize? Sarah, this is where you people just flummox me. You wrote it. You meant it. Stand by it. She apologizes to "anyone I may have offended and I regret these comments." She doesn't regret 'em, and she hasn't apologized to me. She just apologized to anybody she "may have offended," but why apologize in the first place? She's buckling to pressure. She meant to say it.Ha ha. I'll stop there. I hit the mother lode. LOL. Ha ha ha.
She meant it. (interruption) What, Snerdley? What? (interruption) I don't know who is pressuring her to apologize. I have no idea who's pressuring here. You'd have to ask her. But I don't know why she's apologizing. She meant it! Stand by it. She knows damn well she meant it. Everybody on that website, in that listserv, meant everything they wrote. It's just fascinating to see they don't have the guts to stand by it. So that's my reaction. If you want to know what I think about it, that's it. (interruption) If she apologized to me directly? I don't know what I would do, but... (sigh) (interruption) Well, yes, I know I'd be gracious, but I'd just... (interruption) Well, I don't know if it will ever happen, but the point is that the latest trend in apologies, "That's not who I really am." You know, "That's not the person I am." Bull! It is who you are! You are a commie! You are a full-fledged Marxist liberal! You do wish I was dead. It is who you are.
I don't care whether it's Tiger Woods saying, "You know, that's really not who I am." It is. It is who you are! What, did somebody steal your personality for a day and grab hold of your hands and start typing on your keyboard and it wasn't you? "This is not who I am. I want everybody to know, as a publicist I understand and this is not who I am." It is who you are! This is one of the big problems we have in this country: People don't have the guts to be who they are and stand up for who they are and admit what they really are, especially under fire. "Oh, that wasn't me. I don't know what happened there! We were just hanging around with a bunch of like-minded people and then you saw it, and that means 'that's not who I am.'" I bet the other people in this group are a little upset she's apologizing.
So, what do you say? Anyone looking for consistency here?
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