Beyond the Pale

(Note to my readers: I apologize for the overwhelmingly America-centric tone of this blog, lately. In my defense, (a) we've hit the summer season here in Canada and nothing of note is likely to happen up here, politically at least, until September; (b) even when stuff does happen in Canada, more often than not, it's boring. At least compared to the ongoing soap opera that is the American election.)

LIZ TROTTA JOKES ABOUT "KNOCKING OFF" OBAMA ON FOX NEWS

You would think, especially in the wake of Hillary Clinton's words the other day, that people would avoid linking Obama and death in any way. But here we have Liz Trotta on FOX News:



(For those of you on dial-up, I looked for the shortest clip and thus may have lost some of the context. Liz Trotter and James Myers were actually discussing the 'media firestorm' Hillary's remarks conjured up before contributing to it.) They move on to Hillary's flaws: evasions, outright lies, race baiting...

..."and now we have what some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Os..O..Osama...um, uh, Obama...well, both, if we could..."(laughs)

When I first came upon this clip, I almost dismissed it entirely. Aside from the tired Osama...Obama "mixup" that FOX News has deliberately made at every turn (hey, Fox: remember the evil brother in the Bible? His name was Cain, wasn't it? Cain...John McCain...get it?)...I didn't really see the significance. After all, Trotter was careful to couch this as a hypothetical.. "some are reading..."somebody knock off". I read that as fair comment, though it's getting awfully close, in my view, to inciting violence.
But then I listened to the clip again, more closely. Trotter's pronoun changes from "they" to "we". And she laughs at the prospect of "somebody" among the "we"--her audience--"knocking off" both Osama bin Laden and Barack Obama.

It's one thing for Hillary to suggest, accidentally, or accidentally-on-purpose, that she's staying in the race just in case her competitor gets shot. Dirty pool, of course--that little "gaffe" vaulted to the top of my "sickening" list, supplanting this.

It's wholly another for a pundit to suggest, on national television, that "knocking off" Obama would be a good thing, a funny thing. That's so far beyond tasteless I can't even formulate words for it.

EDIT: Here's the inevitable apology:

Yes, I am so sorry about what happened yesterday and the lame attempt at humor. I feel all over myself, making it appear that I wished Barack Obama harm or any other candidate, for that matter, and I sincerely regret it and apologize to anybody I have offended. It is a very colorful political season, and many of us are making mistakes and saying things we wish we had not said.

On the sorrymeter, that rates about a five out of ten. Maybe a six. Nothing about the Osama/Obama "joke"...we'll see if FOX uses that old canard again. Nevertheless, I can't help but think back to when I was a kid. For an unconcionably long time, I believed I could get away with anything, so long as I said "sorry" afterwards. When the word itself wasn't sufficient, I could craft a "sincere" apology complete with downcast eyes, murmured mea culpas and tears, if all else failed, all the while inwardly rejoicing that I'd managed to 'get away' with whatever I had.

Perhaps because of that sociopathic tendency I used to have, I'm very skeptical of any "sorries" I hear. Sorry, eh? If you were that sorry, you wouldn't have said/done it in the first place.*

Put another way, both Trotta's comment and Clinton's which preceded it remind me of a hackneyed lawyerly ploy you find in every legal drama written or aired. The prosecutor winks at the jury and asks some incendiary question, like you liked watching him die, didn't you, Mr. Killer? The defendant's lawyer vaults up out of his seat screaming "OBJECTION!" to the high heavens, which of course the judge sustains, and the prosecutor withdraws the question. Except you can't make a jury unhear things, which is why such questions are asked.)

*I still say "sorry" when I screw up, which is a lot of the time, although I don't think I intentionally screw up anymore. But more often than not I'll find myself apologizing in a completely different way I call "girl-sorry":

"I'm really sorry."

"Why, Ken? You didn't do anything."

"No, but I'm sorry you feel that bad/things didn't work out."