Apologies Accepted

by digby

If you are watching the wall-to-wall Kerry-hates-the-troops coverage today on the cablers you can see perfectly how the patented GOP sanctimonious “demand for an apology” works.

• First, you have to be a phony hypocritical Republican. Democrats can never pull this off.
• Second, you have to choose a comment that isn’t particularly heinous or is vaguely worded. You want the comment to not be particularly bad, for reasons that become obvious when you get to the endgame.
• Third, being desperate to do your bidding because they’ve been a little bit harsh and are eager to get back in your good graces, you give the media tons of footage and sound-bites to work with.
• Fourth you pump the story as hard as you can by demanding that other Democrats distance themselves from the remarks, which they begin to do slowly at first then pile on like a litter of puppies.
• Fifth, you wear down the perpetrator (who has, remember, done nothing really wrong) until you get him to apologise.

And then after all this is said and done, you call all Democrats pussies because they aren’t stand-up guys. After all, they just bowed and scraped and apologised for a trivial comment they had no need to apologise for. Who can trust such weaklings to run the government?

Pay no attention to the death, destruction, incompetence and horror that lies at the center of this coming election. The narrative says Republicans are brave and strong and Democrats are weak and cowardly and that is how it must be. Even if they have to make up a story to illustrate that, the press will do its duty.

Update: If we played this game with equal fervor we’d be demanding that Bush ask for an apology from Rush Limbaugh for what he said about Michael J. Fox, since he’s his new BFF and all. But we don’t.

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