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Rep. Bob Etheridge’s weird apology for his recorded death grip
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| Parent(s) |
Race
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| Contributor | Scott³ |
| Last Edited | Scott³ Jun 14, 2010 03:44pm |
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| Category | Commentary |
| Author | Michael Roston |
| News Date | Monday, June 14, 2010 09:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | "Rep. Bob Etheridge was confronted by a pair of still-anonymous ’students’ in Washington, DC, and asked if he supported “the Obama agenda.” The North Carolina Democrat grabbed one of the pair and angrily demanded that he and his partner identify themselves. The young man eventually freed himself from the Congressman’s grip. The video is below. Etheridge’s actions sure looked like a form of assault or battery, and from the context of the video (which isn’t much) essentially unprovoked.
The Congressman has apologized, but his apology is downright weird. He starts off stating, “I have seen the video posted on several blogs.” He says this as though he is disembodied from what actually transpired – that he collared a young man and refused to let him go when asked to do so. In fact, the Congressman is apologizing for his own actions, but speaking of them as though he isn’t really sure that what he sees is what he did – like he’s a blackout drunk who doesn’t remember what happened the night before.
Then there is the delay between when this apology emerged, and when the events depicted actually transpired. Dave Weigel assembled something of a timeline of when these videos were published. A lot of context is lacking – who the young men are, whether they were working for anyone, who else and how they interviewed other subjects, precisely what date and time the events occurred. But it’s clear that the incident in question occurred last week. Why wouldn’t the Congressman make a good faith effort to get out ahead of the bad press and apologize prior to the publication of the videos? Sure, he’s asking for investigation by reporters, activists, law enforcement if he says off the bat that he’s sorry for something that no one else saw. But in his long-after-action statement, he looks more like he’s in CYA mode, as though he thought maybe he wouldn’t have needed to apologize had there been no video evidence of what he’d done." |
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