I quite enjoyed A-Rod’s admission to Peter Gammons that he used a ban substance during the 2001-2003 seasons. The reason I liked it so much was because it reminded me of how disingenuous professional athletes can be. Clearly, the dude did steroids or something very close, yet he goes out of his way to first claim that he doesn’t recall what he took and then to lessen the blow by claiming the drugs were legally purchased in the Dominican Republic (which was later revealed to be untrue). All this made his apology your typical half-assed one that we’ve grown accustomed to, particularly in the world of MLB. It was eerily similar to the one Jason Giambi treated us to a few years back when he kept apologizing but would never explain exactly why it was that he was apologizing. I guess he couldn’t resort to the “My English ain’t so good” defense like Sammy Sosa did when called in front of some DC bureaucrats to atone for his steroid sins. Why won’t anyone just fess up? When it comes to their heroes, Americans love to forgive and forget because we are a nation of second acts. Just look at Kobe Bryant. Being bullshitted, on the other hand, generally doesn’t go over too well.
Then there was the NY Post’s “apology” for the above cartoon:
Wednesday’s Page Six cartoon – caricaturing Monday’s police shooting of a chimpanzee in Connecticut – has created considerable controversy…It was meant to mock an ineptly written federal stimulus bill. Period. But it has been taken as something else – as a depiction of President Obama, as a thinly veiled expression of racism. This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by the image, we apologize. However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past – and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback. To them, no apology is due. Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon – even as the opportunists seek to make it something else.
Two things here. First, I love it when someone apologizes only for someone else feeling offended. They don’t apologize for the act per se; rather, they simply apologize that you’re so sensitive that you got your feelings hurt. They’re basically saying that they don’t find anything wrong with what they said or did, but they’re sorry that you do. That, my friends, is an apology in word only, not sentiment.
That being said, I actually agree with the Post’s position here. Some crazy woman had her face and hands ripped off by her pet chimpanzee the other day (to which I say, it’s probably best not to own a chimpanzee as a pet, but here I thought that went without saying). And, coincidentally, our wonderful political leaders passed a massive piece of legislation that will represent the greatest increase in government spending that our country has ever seen. In doing so, our nation’s fiscal position will be the weakest it’s ever been, and all this debt we’re piling on will be the legacy we leave to our children and grandchildren. Moreover, the quality of the stimulus can be called into question on a multitude of levels (which I’ll go into in a later post). The point being that the stimulus bill is a monstrosity, so why not make fun of those spending-mad folks who put it together? And, by the way, the people responsible for this bill number many, so the culprit here isn’t just President Obama but a host of enablers and sympathizers, some of whom were personally knee-deep in penning the legislation (eg, Nancy Pelosi).
But, of course, Al Sharpton and the manufactured rage machine is up in arms. As Sharpton and his army is super sensitive media hounds would have us believe, anytime someone makes fun of a monkey then they must be acting on racist impulses. Apparently, it’s impossible to find humor in the intersection of a poorly-written piece of historic legislation and the violent rampaging of a crazed chimp. My guess is that if that woman had a pet crocodile who decided to swallow her whole, you’d see a crocodile lying there in place of that chimpanzee. Just silly.
By the way, anytime the following people feign indignation over pretty much any topic, your knee-jerk response should be to call bullshit: Al Sharpton, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Jesse Jackson, Karl Rove and anyone in Illinois politics. Just an FYI.
I hate Nancy Pelosi!