I have been asked to comment on this. People have asked me about this woman Sarah Spitz, who’s now ‘apologized,’ and they want my reaction to it. And this is another thing I’ll react to it but I really don’t want to. This bores me as well, this whole concept of forcing people to apologize for things they meant to say. Why is she gonna apologize? She meant to say it, she wrote it, stand by it. You want to watch me die, Sarah? Say it! Where are your guts? Well, she’s ‘apologized.’ ‘A producer for an NPR-affiliated radio station has apologized for saying she would ‘laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out’ if she were to see conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh suffering a heart attack[.]
‘In the latest fallout over the exposed e-mails from a now defunct private online forum for liberal journalists, Sarah Spitz, who produces the show Left, Right & Center for KCRW [that’s in Santa Monica] public radio program, said in a statement posted on NPR that she ‘made poorly considered remarks about Rush Limbaugh to what I believed was a private e-mail discussion group from my personal e-mail account,” as though that makes it okay. She’s not the first to use this excuse. Hey, I — I — I didn’t expect anybody to hear about this! Who are you? I’m a journalist. You don’t get to learn what I’m all about. I’m a journalist, you don’t get to know what I really think! I’m a journalist, you can’t do an expose on me! This is my private account. How dare you report something that’s on my private account?
I always love it when these people get a dose of their own medicine because they can’t take it. So she said ‘made poorly considered remarks about Rush Limbaugh to what I believed was a private e-mail discussion group from my personal e-mail account. As a publicist, I realize more than anyone that is no excuse for irresponsible behavior. I apologize to anyone I may have offended and I regret these comments greatly; they do not reflect the values by which I conduct my life.’ Now, that simple isn’t true. She said it, she wrote it, she stood by it. Why apologize? Sarah, this is where you people just flummox me. You wrote it. You meant it. Stand by it. She apologizes to ‘anyone I may have offended and I regret these comments.’ She doesn’t regret ’em, and she hasn’t apologized to me. She just apologized to anybody she ‘may have offended,’ but why apologize in the first place? She’s buckling to pressure. She meant to say it.
She meant it. (interruption) What, Snerdley? What? (interruption) I don’t know who is pressuring her to apologize. I have no idea who’s pressuring here. You’d have to ask her. But I don’t know why she’s apologizing. She meant it! Stand by it. She knows damn well she meant it. Everybody on that website, in that listserv, meant everything they wrote. It’s just fascinating to see they don’t have the guts to stand by it. So that’s my reaction. If you want to know what I think about it, that’s it. (interruption) If she apologized to me directly? I don’t know what I would do, but… (sigh) (interruption) Well, yes, I know I’d be gracious, but I’d just… (interruption) Well, I don’t know if it will ever happen, but the point is that the latest trend in apologies, ‘That’s not who I really am.’ You know, ‘That’s not the person I am.’ Bull! It is who you are! You are a commie! You are a full-fledged Marxist liberal! You do wish I was dead. It is who you are.
I don’t care whether it’s Tiger Woods saying, ‘You know, that’s really not who I am.’ It is. It is who you are! What, did somebody steal your personality for a day and grab hold of your hands and start typing on your keyboard and it wasn’t you? ‘This is not who I am. I want everybody to know, as a publicist I understand and this is not who I am.’ It is who you are! This is one of the big problems we have in this country: People don’t have the guts to be who they are and stand up for who they are and admit what they really are, especially under fire. ‘Oh, that wasn’t me. I don’t know what happened there! We were just hanging around with a bunch of like-minded people and then you saw it, and that means ‘that’s not who I am.” I bet the other people in this group are a little upset she’s apologizing.