Commenting on a report posted to Facebook about a gorilla escape at a zoo in Columbia, S.C., Friday, longtime GOP activist Rusty DePass wrote, "I'm sure it's just one of Michelle's ancestors - probably harmless."Busted by South Carolina political blogger Will Folks on his FITNEWS blog, DePass told WIS-TV in Columbia, "I am as sorry as I can be if I offended anyone. The comment was clearly in jest."
Then he added, "The comment was hers, not mine," claiming Michelle Obama made a recent remark about humans descending from apes. The Daily News could find no such comment.
Now, I normally wouldn't highlight this--it seems pretty clear that there is, at least, a section of the GOP that can't unstrap itself from the wit and wisdom of white supremacy. You can't build court racists and then expect them to stop talking about Obama waffles and watermelon because it's inconvenient. It's who they are.
But it's really the apology that boggles me. The "if I offended anyone" is par for the course for the passive-agressive non-apology. But DePass goes further than that--he actually blames Michelle Obama, falsely apparently, for the whole thing!
This is probably the worst non-apology I've ever seen--but it's of a piece with this particular thing about us, this aversion to admitting error, even when caught red-handed. Perhaps I'm extrapolating too much. Politics is a particular business that attracts a particular kind of person. Maybe if you're in pitched battle with the other side, and in the business of making sure you're side wins, this sort of fake humility becomes your stock and trade.
Also, as a side-note, it's always amazing to see dude's who look like DePass cracking jokes about some woman's appearance. The last to be talking, are the first to flap the lip.
But it's really the apology that boggles me. The "if I offended anyone" is par for the course for the passive-agressive non-apology. But DePass goes further than that--he actually blames Michelle Obama, falsely apparently, for the whole thing!
This is probably the worst non-apology I've ever seen--but it's of a piece with this particular thing about us, this aversion to admitting error, even when caught red-handed. Perhaps I'm extrapolating too much. Politics is a particular business that attracts a particular kind of person. Maybe if you're in pitched battle with the other side, and in the business of making sure you're side wins, this sort of fake humility becomes your stock and trade.
Also, as a side-note, it's always amazing to see dude's who look like DePass cracking jokes about some woman's appearance. The last to be talking, are the first to flap the lip.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
On that last part, the cracks average-looking and even beautiful women will get from average-looking men are astounding sometimes. The idiots are shooting themselves in the foot as well as exposing their deep insecurities.
I can't say why, exactly, accountability is a lost art.
But I have a theory that I have been working for about 5 years. It's this: The imposition of the zero-tolerance theory of management onto all levels of our society. It's a human-resources policy gone amok.
It makes a lot of sense to say, 'Here at XYZ Inc. we have a zero tolerance policy for sexual harassment'. Whether you then train everyone in the organization to call out harassment is another story, but as a policy it makes sense to reduce potential liability.
Zero tolerance for weapons means that a high school senior who brings a paring knife and cuts up an apple for her own lunch in her own car is 'in violation', and the more draconian and less common-sense the outcome the better. Ridiculous outcomes prove that the institution isn't discriminating.
Which brings us to the connection: The HR mantra is, 'The more you say, the more you pay'. Accountability has been confused with liability by too many people who don't understand either one. They think that saying 'Man, we bungled THAT one' means 'and we're admitting that we ought to be sued'.
So why can't folks handle the simple act of contrition? Because the movement to make acts of discrimination cost something has succeeded in this aspect: bigots know that they're wrong and that it might cost.
Someone here who isn't in as many forms of chaos as I am today can explain this better.
To summarize a bit better: What Dog the Bounty Hunter was worried about was getting caught and losing everything because he doesn't wish to stop using racial slurs.
So his apology took the form, 'I don't feel racist', and it was a darn sincere one. Leaving aside the issue that how you feel was never the problem...
Your hypothesis on its face makes a WHOLE lot of sense, PHX.
Great post.
I once had a fancy dinner with a couple of investment dudes. To put it generously, these guys were not particularly attractive. They spoke a lot about two things:
1. Whether they were receiving the proper level of respect from those around them
2. Whether various famous "babes" were worthy of having sex with them.
To sit and listen to these clowns go on and on about how say, Cameron Diaz, was kinda pretty and all but not good enough to be a "dime" was seriously one of the worst things I have ever had to sit through.
But here is what I learned. For these cats, their sense of privilege is very closely tied to their self esteem and what they were really engaging in is an exercise where each validated the other to prop both of these psychological requirements up. I had a very difficult time communicating with them until I understood that.
Certain subcultures do exacerbate this ugly instinct a lot more than others. Heavily macho, insiders-only clubs like finance and professional sports are repeat offenders, but it shows up all the time in sectors of the mass political and geek worlds too. It's a sort of self-perpetuating cycle of misogyny and fronting that seems to show up a lot more when you're dealing with a group of people with a heavily-specialized and highly-rewarded (when you reach the top, anyway) skillset, and it's really freaking weird.
I think the point about whether famous women are worthy of having sex with them really points to how the media treats female performers in general. Most people involved in making films are male and thus they present and treat female actors a certain way in that process. The media in general is dominated by sexist attitudes, so the magazine articles, entertainment news pieces, etc. tend to use a fast and low set of standards for how these women and girls should be treated. Also, thanks to the internet it is more widely accepted to critique these women's looks when they are off screen or in close up shots, this is known as "body snarking." Three dimensional women are broken down into broad stereotypes, then one dimensional symbols, then images, and then just their individual body parts, by the end of it they're not really people you need to respect.
I think the point about whether famous women are worthy of having sex with them really points to how the media treats female performers in general. Most people involved in making films are male and thus they present and treat female actors a certain way in that process. The media in general is dominated by sexist attitudes, so the magazine articles, entertainment news pieces, etc. tend to use a fast and low set of standards for how these women and girls should be treated. Also, thanks to the internet it is more widely accepted to critique these women's looks when they are off screen or in close up shots, this is known as "body snarking." Three dimensional women are broken down into broad stereotypes, then one dimensional symbols, then images, and then just their individual body parts, by the end of it they're not really people you need to respect.
Brent-
I once had a "burrito lunch" with two of the many "blue-collar" black males I worked with- one of whom was my direct supervisor- We settled on two main topics:
1)Whether we were receiving the proper level of respect from those around us. (Office staff vs. Warehouse staff, Mgmt vs. Supervisor vs. Employee, even a "perceived Mgmt. bias" between Shipping/Receiving- me and Harold worked Receiving, Kelvin was in Shipping)
2)Whether various famous "babes" were worthy of having sex with us. (I wouldn't even hit Cameron Diaz with your dick...)
I'm still trying to guess your point... Am I to be surprised that people of "privilege" play the same social games as their economic "inferiors"?
I'm still trying to guess your point... Am I to be surprised that people of "privilege" play the same social games as their economic "inferiors"?
My point was simply to amplify what calexical was saying and I thought it was clear enough: That my personal experience is that these particular expressions with regard to women can be guided by a shared need to establish both one's privilege and self esteem. In the case of these two, I found their behavior quite obsessive and it thus caused me to understand something about why people might act this way that I hadn't realized before.
Now perhaps I wasn't clear enough on
1. just how obsessed these guys were about how much respect they expected from every single person they came into contact with
2. that their talk about women wasn't just the normal guy shit talk. That is, they seemed to operate under the assumption that they could have sex with anyone they wanted. It would have never occurred to them that Cameron Diaz might reject them
but in any case, like you, I am not quite sure what you are getting at. You seem to believe that this is meant to be a comment on class. That is, you seem to place a lot of weight on the class of the people I was discussing but of course privilege (not sure why you felt to need to put the word in quotes) is about much more than class and class was not the point of my story. If your point is that people of all classes can be crude, consider the point taken.
Very very slight point, which should not be read in any way as a defense of whoever this guy is:
"If I offended anyone" IS actually taking some responsibility. It can be read in contrast to "If anyone was offended." While the latter is the classic non-apology, the former at least acknowledges the responsibility for the offense.
That being said, yeah, he totally obliterates any trace of an apology by blaming it on some supposed statement the First Lady might have made about evolution (as if that's a fair defense even if she had made some similar comment).
Gotta disagree. He KNOWS he offended people, that's why he's bringing it up.
Fair enough. I'm not saying it's not passive aggressive. I am saying that it is at least an acknowledgment of personal responsibility. As opposed to: "I'm sorry if anyone was offended," in which case, you are simply saying it would be regrettable if somebody was offended. At least in this instance he is saying that he would regret it if HE offended somebody.
Like I said, though, it's a very tiny point.
Obviously it would be more of an apology to say I'm sorry that I offended you. Even better: I'm sorry I said it. I shouldn't have.
Still, I think this is modestly better than a non-apology.
i think this apology doesn't take any personal responsibility since it is for the the reaction, not the action. saying "i'm sorry you had the reaction you did" is not at all the same as saying "i'm sorry for what i said. it was wrong, etc". these are apologies for two completely different events. the shameful event was the remark.... not the reaction to it, right? i have a hard time calling anything he said an "apology".
I see what you're saying, but I think you're giving him too much credit. I think he got a bit lucky with the phrasing grammatically.
I don’t think it’s necessary that we drag this out, because again, I don’t want it to sound as if I am defending this DB, but as a matter of fact, he’s taking responsibility for causing an offense. Taking the indefensible IF out of the statement, he’s not saying I’m sorry YOU WERE OFFENDED, he’s saying I’m sorry I OFFENDED YOU. The former is an example of the passive voice, whereas the latter is in the active voice. In the latter, the speaker offends. In the former, somebody is offended by the speaker.
Now, I wouldn’t put it past this guy to try and give the proper non-apology apology. Maybe he was trying to do it here, but in acknowledging that he caused the offense (as opposed to the possibility that someone may have—perhaps unreasonably—taken offense) he did go a step further than that.
Dan, I totally acknowledge that I may be giving this guy more credit than he deserves. In fact, I don't mean to give him any credit at all, that's why I prefaced the whole thing by calling a "very very slight point."
He's clearly a douche who very well could have been so stupid that he screwed up the very simple wording of a classic non-apology apology. In which case, I mean to ridicule him further for being too inept to know how to not apologize properly.
Sorry, I don't buy that. The "if I offended anybody" construction implies that he believes that there are people who wouldn't be offended by this. And, clearly, there are--like Eric Davis, who thinks everybody says something stupid sometimes.
But the "if I offended anyone" is classic and depends on the onus being on those sensitive souls who might actually take offense.
On another note, TNC, I posted the NY Daily News article to my own FB page before I saw this post, but I appended to it your two recent posts about the virtues of political correctness. All DePass had to do to avoid this kerfuffle is think for a moment--a fleeting moment--about what his line might sound like to people who don't look like him. A fleeting moment of empathy. PC has its problems, but the underlying empathy, as TNC pointed out, ain't one of them.
As I said, the only real distinction I am making is between the active and passive voice. This "apology" is in the active voice whereas the classic non-apology is always in the passive voice. In this apology, the subject is "I" and the transitive verb/action being performed is "offend," and the direct object, the thing on which the action is being performed is "anybody." We can all take exception with his phrasing it as a hypothetical, but it is still phrased in a way that accepts that HE was the one who offended. It is not in the passive voice, which would deflect responsibility by leaving open the interpretation that it is your fault for taking what I said in the wrong way (i.e. I am sorry if YOU were offended by what I said.).
the comments and the non-apology apology are par for the course from this group. it's who they are.
But where's the part where he explains that the key to rebuilding the Republican party is to attract young blacks and Latinos? That's been a recurrent theme for the GOP lately, except that virtually all their spokespeople are dedicated to running off those groups.
The non-apology apology. It's as if certain people see apologizing as a game to score points instead of a simple act of courtesy.
Yes, but the problem is with the "if" in a situation when you obviously have been called to task for being offensive. To my mind there is an implication in the phrasing that the person is trying to keep some distance between themselves and full responsibility thereby leaving the door open to others to behave similarly andthen trot out the excuse of fake ignorance.
I must be naive, but it's still surprising to me that there are people in the US who are (1) bigoted enough to think that crack was funny (2) stupid enough to say it out loud, and (3) feckless enough to 'apologize' "if" anyone was offended. Triple fail, Rusty.
Considering that he believes his path out of this mess involves mocking well-established scientific theory and those who accept its truth, I'm going to give him the rare quadruple fail.
Actually, you also have to factor in that he seems to be afflicted with a particular Republican ailment, by which he doesn't seem to understand the existence of the internet and the fact that it can be used to verify his claims.
So we could quite possibly be looking at a never before seen quintuple fail.
Their real problem (beyond bigotry) is that they always seem to think they're in the good ole boys club and are too stupid to figure out that the internet doesn't work that way. Once you post it, it's out there for the whole world to see, not just the folks you're dog whistling to.
These kinds of apologies are code to the people who were not offended and thought it was funny. They try to play both sides - pretty much getting out of trouble, but letting their guys know they don't really mean the apology. Aside from politics, when someone I know includes an "if" in their apology to me, I don't accept it as an apology. Saying, "I'm sorry IF I hurt your feelings" or "I'm sorry IF I offended you" is not accepting responsibility. IF don't count!
I don't know if I would go that far. Surely there are times -for the record I don't this is one of them-, where a person honestly didn't know that they offended and is seeking to make things right. I've been guilty of that and the apology ususally goes something like "I'm sorry if I offended you I didn't know X was offensive I will try to do better in the future." I mean I don't think we should always attribute to malice what can be adequately described by ignorance. This isn't one of those times clearly the guy is trying to not apologize while apologizing. I just wanted to say that it seems that you might be being a little harsh with some people.
When I am apologizing to someone, there is usually a reason. They act hurt or offended, or tell me that they are hurt or offended. Therefore, there is no question that my actions have caused some kind of unrest in that person, whether or not it was intentional. So, it is not a question of "if" I have hurt or offended them, I obviously have, even if I didn't mean to. I expect to be judged by and accountable for my actions, rather than my intentions.
The "if factor" only applies in the case of binge or blackout drinking, as alluded to by Stacy.
I apologize if I sounded harsh.
I wish I had your clarity in this. I don't always know if I've offended and so sometimes its better to offer an apology with a conditional than to let things go. And don't worry, IMO you didn't sound harsh at all.
Typically I'd agree with this, but sometimes you really might not be sure if you offended someone. Which, in that case, an 'if' might be appropriate. Maybe this just happens to me more often because I often stick my foot in my mouth when drinking...
Hoof in mouth disease. As a chronic sufferer that is what I was trying to get at.
Rusty, I'm sorry for calling you a douche bag. It was a total overreaction on my part to your ignorant jack-ass like behavior.
...I hope that, in the future, I will be better able to ignore and transcend any dumb-ass thing you happen to say.
It's always tricky trying to decide what politicians say out of personal integrity/sincerity and what they say for political reasons, referring here to the apology, but there is a broader attitude down here in the South, like in that PBS documentary the other night about mardi gras in Mobile or that NYT's bit on the seperate proms for those of you elsewhere, where because the public image of bigotry is still the KKK more moderate bigots feel like views along the lines of seperate but "equal" or this kind of debasing humor about apes/monkeys is not really racism, so it's a long education process and highlights the contiuing value of public places like this for people to come together for a more respectful exchange of ideas/experiences.
His apology is unconvincing because he's not sorry. This wasn't a tasteless crack that slipped out while joking around with friends over cocktails. This was something he thought was witty enough to post to a public forum -- meaning he actually had to sit down and compose the line, then submit it.
So, either he's stupid for thinking it wouldn't catch flak, or he figured "fuck it, I can always offer some mealy-mouthed, insincere, phony-ass apology." It doesn't rate a "fail" because it wasn't even an attempt.
And, by the way, there's nothing wrong with being related to apes -- as we all are. They are damned fascinating creatures.
Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote: "I'd love to see some scientific studies on why people find it so hard to say, 'My bad.' "
I just finished reading a book about this very subject. The book is called, "Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts", by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson:
http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But-Not/dp/0156033909/
The book is excellent -- I highly recommend it.
Carol Tavis spoke at my college once, she's a really excellent guest and great writer.
And hopefully she'd forgive me for misspelling her name.
I have to agree with the title and spirit of the post, without parsing the semantic nuances of DePass too much.
In the last six months two separate friends have acted in ways that, without doubt, would clearly be cause for me to take offense. Both of them offered the 'I'm sorry for how that made you feel' passive-aggressive BS that I find actually adds insult to injury. I usually accept these sorts of apologies, although with these two friends I did not.
I really have no idea why saying "I am sorry I offended you" or "I am sorry I did that; I didn't mean to cause offense" is so difficult for humans to say outside of politics.
Have Americans become so arrogant and full of pride that they never think that when they offend another human, even if inadvertently, that it's just beyond them to say "I'm sorry" full stop?
I can't believe this alleged Republican is spouting this evolution nonsense...it seems clear that if evolution were true that it is more likely first lady was descended from ancestors she might have shared with chimpanzees rather than gorillas.
Talk about non-apology, Rusty DePass should totally apologize for encouraging belief in this evolution hokum.
The first lady is obviously very accomplished and beautiful for a Negress. Her mulatto husband is lucky to have her. I find him a very talented buck with an astounding command of the English language. It's like going to the carnival sideshow every time I hear him speak. Now there's no call to abuse a colored boy who's got such a tough row to hoe.
I'd wager this Rusty fellow likely beats his horses too.
That's some pretty cryptic satire there, dude.
BWA HA HA HA HA HA
I'm just in the mood where this is frigging hilarious to me.
This kind of reminds me of ex-Senator George Allen's "macaca" incident. It was hard to believe that anyone campaigning for public office would direct a racial slur toward someone holding a video camera. However, Rusty is a close second for pure,unadulterated stupidity.
In the macaca video, I remember that the crowd laughing at the racial slur.
The ugly truth is that these southern white men just feel so comfortable in their skin that they do this without giving it a thought. Some of them, however, are learning the hard way about the blogosphere and YouTube.
As TNC says, the "if I offended anyone" part is standard. But "The comment was hers, not mine" is quite special. I imagine him going on,"What, you thought it was racist? That didn't even occur to me! You must be racist to have even thought of that! No, no, I was merely mocking her pro-evolution views...which now that I'm thinking about it, offended me! And I didn't see her apologizing!"
Yeah, that one amuses me: the idea that the people who recognize racism are the true racists. Colbert always has fun with that one: "Now, I don't see color. People tell me I'm white. And I believe them, because I have no trouble hailing a cab."
Cleary he was grasping for a straw and he knows that Michelle Obama being a High School graduate who doesn't need to pander to evangelical funadamentalists must have sometime said she believed in evolution.
Of course being a southern politician who has to constantly appeal to evangelical fundamentalists he has spent so much time mocking evolutiuon that he forgot that no one but ignorant evangelical fundamentalists thinks evolution means we descended from Gorillas, so unfortunately for him there will not be any quotes by Michelle Obama saying we descended from Gorillas.
Of course that is me giving him the most benmefit of the doubt I can, for all I know he may be an ignorant evangelical fundamentalist who thinks eveolution means we descended from Apes...
He isn't sorry, and he doesn't expect anyone who he cares about to expect him to be sorry.
What changes this behavior is the sad disapproval of people you recognize as your own. For this guy, maybe Senator Graham and Governor Sanford. Maybe Ralph Reed. Maybe Grover Norquist. In any case, it's got to be white man to white man, and conservative to conservative. The problem, of course, is that most of them don't disapprove at all, and those who feel a flicker of discomfort suppress it to win elections.
(I hope the decent people of South Carolina are working on Graham and Sanford. I recommend telling them that if they don't stand up for the First Lady, they are not gentlemen. That's playing the whole southern gentility game, but it's where they live and might be something they can hear. Sadly, I don't think calls from out of state will matter a bit.)
Of course, you're aware that the classic manifestation of Southern chivalry does not extend civil courtesies to members of the non-white races. There may have been amendments to that code in the last few decades, but I haven't seen them.
I do indeed know it well.
But having been raised by a mutant strain of white Southerner, I know all varieties hate being accused of bad manners. Folks over about 60 may have learned explicit justifications for discourtesy to non-whites, but most younger ones don't have an ideology that makes it okay: they just do this stuff because "everyone" does.
If you call the younger ones rude, indecent, tacky, and vulgar, they deeply want it not to be true. Even better, if you can do it from the heart of your own faith, tell them they're an embarrassment to the Gospel.
Their humanity isn't utterly gone. It's well buried under a bad upbringing, bad politics, and bad educations, but it's in there--and courtesy and Christianity are the quickest routes to find it.
But what is the fall-out for people like this? Practically nothing. George Allen and Elizabeth Dole both lost politically for bigotry (him) and attacking her opponents faith (her). But those two individuals live in swing states. The congressman who repeatedly requests Obama's birth certificate is from Georgia. DePass is from South Carolina. Because of geographic voting patterns, I don't think their stupidity will cost them their jobs. So beyond human decency (which is obviously a problem for them), where is their incentive to apologize?
Human decency is pretty much it.
At some point, hypothetically, the GOP would find having Senators who go embarrassingly off-message as their second tier spokespeople to be as problematic as having the first tier be Rush, Dick, and Newt. (The first tier don't hold office; the second tier do, so the "he has no formal position in the party" line fails.)
But it seems like there are these lonely young Republicans explaining that they need to attract more diversity to build the party for the new millenium, blindly missing that the first and second tier spokespeople for the party are still vigorously driving people away.
I like how Rusty thinks that the problem wasn't the content of his joke but that his audience simply failed to realize that he was making a joke. Nice try.
These dunces still think that Darwin's idea was that gorillas turned into chimps which turned into cavemen which turned into humans. They don't get, and never have, and never will. But they think they do get it because, hey, they've got strong feelings about it and they've got their hunches and their gut feelings and their "faith." It's like that Texas congressman who was laughing at Dr. Chu because the notion of continental drift was just soooooo silly, and surely oil couldn't have "just drifted" up to the arctic circle. Surely Alaska has oil because God wants it that way.
Oh for fuck's sake.
That should be this link:
http://www.nashvilleistalking.com/2009/06/sen-diane-blacks-r-gallatin-legislative-aid-circulates-racist-email/
It keeps happening. Amazing. People get caught. And they keep doint it. And it isn't like private citizens. It's politicos.
"When I asked her if she understood the controversial nature of the photo, Goforth would only say she felt very bad about accidentally sending it to the wrong list."
You see? It wasn't that the pic was racist, it was that she sent it to the wrong people. Glad we cleared that up.
I do think there's a little Col. Jessup going on here-- I think Rusty and company subconsciously want to be "caught," part of them wants to air out the racist jokes as a way of reclaiming the public sphere. They are tired of having to press one for English, tired of being "sensitive" about race-- this is their country dammit, and they can joke about black people if they want to. They cannot help themselves after a certain point.
I agree 100% Gramsci.
"YOU'RE G-DDAMN RIGHT I ORDERED THE RACIST EMAIL!!"
Just linked and posted.
People have mentioned George Allen without pointing out that he made what has to be one of the ultimate nonapologies of all time:
"I apologize to anyone who may have been offended by the misinterpretation of my remarks."
I've done my fair share of time battling creationists.
The "Is your grandpa an ape?" slur is a fairly common one that they throw out at anyone who believes in evolution and it's entirely possible that he didn't pause to consider the racist implications of suggesting that a black woman is an ape. [1]
That said, I can't say that I'm unhappy to see a creationist talking point backfire so utterly and spectacularly.
[1] Of course, we all apes, but that sort of nuance is really not relevant.
While I would surmise that Michelle Obama believes in evolution, has she ever talked about the issue in public?
Same experience and interpretation here.
I think your giving him way too much benefit of the doubt here.
So he sees a story about an escaped gorilla and being a creationist the first thing he thinks of is the "your grandpa was an ape joke" fine I suppose I can buy that, but appropo of nothing the first person he thinks of to make the joke about is Michelle Obama?
Here, for contrast, is a really, really good apology.