"apology" -- stretched again

[Wilson Gray]

On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 4:03 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:

> And then there's the conditional version: Â "If I have offended anyone
> (hurt anyone's feelings, etc.), I am sorry". (With an implied "but
> then again it's your own fault for being so hypersensitive".) Â These
> have been called "unapologies".
>

It wasn't the first time that I'd heard the unapology used, but it's
forever associated in my mind with Jesse Jackson and his
pswaydo-apology, on SNL, for his use of "hymies" and "Hymietown."

That "really frosted my balls," to borrow the catch-phrase of the
police-commissioner character on Hill Street Blues.

I haven't been the recipient of this particular form of the unapology,
but I am familiar with another, older(?) version, as when a
barracks-mate said to me, WRT his use of "niggers" to designate black
GI's *not* members of the Army Security Agency. "I'm sorry, but that's
the way I feel about it."

--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

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