The moment I lost any last bit of respect I might have had for John Kerry is when he got on tv and actually apologized for the Swift Boat incident. Who was he apologizing to? For what? Being on the other side of the river? Who cares? He’s getting shot at. He should have said, “I don’t really know exactly where I was. It’s not like you’re on the Interstate and they put up those signs. ‘Welcome to Cambodia. Rest stop ahead.’ I know one thing: I was serving my country. I was getting shot at. And wherever I was, it was a hell of a lot more dangerous than wherever George Bush was. Or wasn’t.” (So F* You.)

That’s what he should have said.

But everyone has to apologize.

It’s so insipid.

Just the other day, I saw Jim Mora, Jr. on ESPN making some absurd apology.

Every time you hear a news story about someone saying something, or doing something, it always concludes with how he or she has issued some type of statement with some deeply felt apology.

People say things. It’s no big deal. Get on with it.

Like Mel Gibson. Apologizes to the Jews. What does he have to apologize for? He didn’t do anything to me. I don’t want his apology.

You don’t like him. You think he’s a bigot. You don’t want to see his movies. Okay.

But who are you, or me, or anyone else to demand an apology.

This isn’t even “sticks and stones”. I mean, if he came up to me and called me a Dirty Jew or something, then maybe he would owe me an apology.

But him spouting off to a bunch of cops 2,000 miles away. How does that affect my life?

Plus, is forcing people to apologize really going to change anything? It’s just words. If he’s sincere, he doesn’t need changing. And if he isn’t sincere, he’s not going to change. In fact, he’s likely going to become more resentful. And so are the other anti-Semitic people out there. You think they are going to be sitting around saying to themselves, You know, I saw Mel Gibson’s apology, and I am really starting to think differently about the Jewish people. No, they are going to be saying to themselves, “You see? Can’t say anything about the Jews, man. They control everything. Sure, you can make fun of Christians, or white people, but you say anything about the Jews, they bring you into line, fast.”

I recently read some op-ed where the columnist suggested that the fact society demands that someone like Michael Richards apologize for using the “N-word” is a reflection of how far we have come as a society.

That may be true, but I don’t think the dynamic itself is progressive. If anything, it probably feeds the prejudice.

Maya Angelou and Dave Chapelle were on Iconoclasts a couple of weeks ago, and they were talking about the use of the “N-word”. And Maya Angelou said something a lot more eloquently but along the lines of: “You can take a bottle of poison. And it says, on the outside of the bottle, ‘Poison’, with those ugly little skull and crossbones. But if you pour the contents out, and put them into a beautiful crystal container, you haven’t changed what it is. It’s still poison.”

The other thing about all of these apologies is that they almost always involve things which, in the grand scheme of things, really don’t add up to a hill of beans. Yet when the stakes are high, then people don’t want to apologize.

Like politicians.

If they call some kid a “Macaca”, they apologize profusely. But if they make a decision that gets someone killed, they’re never wrong. They’ve always got some explanation.

I enjoy watching the clips of Bush saying stupid things on The Daily Show just as much as the next guy. But the reality is that if you are always on camera, making speeches, answering questions, you are going to say some dumb things. Or make mistakes. Or whatever.

Sometimes Tim Russert or Jon Stewart really nails someone. (Which generally happens when the person has admitted to something that everyone knows is true. And 99% of the time, they are denying it. And the pundits defend them. But everyone knows they are full of it. And this one time, they slip up, and let their guard down, (or perhaps had said something in the past at a time when they didn’t realize it was going to be something that they needed to be defensive about), and they get nailed.) But a lot of times, these guys are confronted with something they said that is really irrelevant. Or was obviously just a misstatement. So you have an inconsistency. But so what? And yet, it’s like a knee-jerk reaction. They have to try to explain it. Well, what I was really saying. Or, you have to understand the context. Or some other b.s.

Just once, I would love to see Tim Russert or Stephen Colbert or Bill O’Reilly or 60 Minutes or whoever bring out some quote, and the person being interviewed says: “Yeah, I said it. So what?”

As for the Mel Gibsons and the Michael Richards of the world, I don’t watch movies because I think the people making them are “good people”. I watch them because they are good movies.

I listen to Nina Simone, and she hated me.

Bad people do good things.

Good people do bad things.

If Michael Richards is going to apologize for anything, he should apologize that his act wasn’t funny.