I want to apologize, Hillary, for offending you by taking offense at your offensive remarks.

[hisownpetard]

I'm sorry.
I apologize.
I didn't mean it.
I don't know what I was thinking.
I shouldn't have said it.
It came out wrong.
It was thoughtless.
It was rude.
It was unfeeling.
I was only thinking of myself.
It was reckless.
It was stupid.
It was blasphemous.
It was vile.

OK, Hillary. Now - your turn!

[dcindian]

1. Kinda like Shooters hunting buddy...

"My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through this week," Whittington said.

[hisownpetard]

2. Yeah! Gee, Dick, I'm sorry that my face got in the way of your buckshot...

[book_worm]

3. Wasn't her "apology" a doozy? She said "if" I offended anyone

as they say the classic Washington apology non-apology.

[hisownpetard]

5. A real apology does not have the word "if" in it.

I'm sorry if my intelligent, well-enunciated remarks were too much for your pitiful pea-brain to digest...
not an apology.

[marylanddem]

4. So sorry that we made you invoke assassination!

[hisownpetard]

6. "Forgive me, Lord, for I have ... said some things that some people have taken

out of context and used to beat me up with..."

[marylanddem]

11. "Forgive us, God, for believing that Hillary meant what she said."

[Bright Eyes]

7. I'm sorry, Senator Clinton!

It was just my elitist mind making you say those awful things.

[hisownpetard]

14. I'm sorry we made you so tired that you couldn't help what you said.

Our bad!

[dchill]

8. OK, that DOES it! K&R.

[WeDidIt]

9. I'm sorry Hillary, here's my open wounds

go ahead and rub more salt into them like you did with your op-ed.

[marylanddem]

13. Good one!

A nice refreshing salt rub on Sunday morning!

[WeDidIt]

17. I forgot to mention the vinegar

It makes sure you don't scab over for a while, this way she can pick at the scab in August.

[hisownpetard]

19. And here's a lemon for you to squeeze into my fresh paper cut, if you like...

[ruby slippers]

10. I underestimated your feelings about this

I didn't think.
I thought you would understand.
I didn't look at your side.
I couldn't control myself.
WTF?

Next....

[hisownpetard]

15. How thoughtless of us to pay attention to your words and what they meean!

[Swamp Rat]

12. LOL!

:D

[hisownpetard]

20. Heh heh.

:hi:

[DevonRex]

16. I'm sorry I heard what you said, Hillary. What was I thinking? nt

[hisownpetard]

18. If I had had the TV on mute. I never would've heard what you said. I'm so sorry!

[jgraz]

21. Just tell her is was 3 am and you were taking sniper fire. She'll understand.

[ruby slippers]

24. good one

:rofl:

[Ichingcarpenter]

22. The apologizer's goal

The apologizer's goal is to cite the narrowest possible range of offended people and reasons for offense in a non apology/apology.

A non-apology of the first kind


Geoff Pullum's classic post "Pete Rose and sorry statements of the third kind" (1/13/2004) offered a taxonomy of apologies, based on a pairing of syntactic structures and communicative content:

The word sorry is used in three ways.

First, sorry can be used with a complement having the form of what The Cambridge Grammar calls a content clause:>>>>>> snip, explains the Grammatical syntax of the use


"If my remarks were in any way offensive, I'm sorry" is even weaker than "I'm sorry that my remarks were in any way offensive", since it doesn't even grant that it's a fact that the remarks were in any way offensive.

We should also note that being sorry for causing offense is itself a rather weak form of sorriness, since it doesn't necessarily imply being sorry for the actions or words that caused the offense. It's perfectly appropriate to take a stance like "I'm sorry for offending you, but what I said was true and had to be said." Senator Clinton didn't go so far as to express regret for having referenced the RFK assassination, only for the fact that referencing it might have caused offense (and only, she feels, because it was misinterpreted).

Of course, the offense caused by mentioning a national trauma (and piling woes on the Kennedy family) was small compared to the offense caused by implying that she hopes that her opponent might be killed. I don't think that she meant any such thing, at least consciously, but a lot of people took it that way.

There have been many other LL posts on the linguistic analysis of apologies — you can find a sample here. >>>>snip


An important part of the public ritual of political apology is the question of which feelings of offense (however allegedly misguided) the politician feels compelled to mention. The apologizer's goal is to cite the narrowest possible range of offended people and reasons for offense.

Thus it's not an accident that Senator Clinton mentioned the feelings of the Kennedy family and others about mentioning RFK's assassination, but not the feelings of those who were shocked by the implication that she should stay in the race in case her opponent is killed.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=187

[hisownpetard]

23. I'm sorry if my perfectly lucid remarks about assassination caused you people to get all wussy

for no reason.

:hi:

[Mme. Defarge]

25. Took the words right outa my mouth, but,

my BIGGEST apology is to Tonya Harding -- for making all of those unfair comparisons.

[cliffordu]

26. DING DING DING We have a winner!!!

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[roguevalley]

27. I'm sorry, Hillary, that you don't have the integrity to accept that you

have such swinishly obsessive desires for power that you would use dead people to advance your cause. I am sorry that I believe that you meant exactly what you said. mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa.