Hey, Newt—Apologies are a GOOD Thing!
In the 1970 movie, “Love Story,” Oliver has the famous line, “Love means never having to say you‘re sorry.” It was bad advice then and it’s still bad advice.
When you do something wrong, the right response is to apologize, sincerely and without a lot of waffly “but” language or excuses. Maybe you even do something to make it up to the wronged party. Unlike Oliver, I apologize to my wife when I’ve been wrong about something or behaved badly, and she does the same to me when she’s the one who screwed up. And I apologize to other people if I’ve done something that inadvertently hurt them.
Will someone please tell Newt Gingrich that this is how mature people, and mature countries, behave? Gingrich is upset that President Obama apologized because the military in Afghanistan accidentally caught up some Korans in a batch of papers they were incinerating.
I’m betting Gingrich would stridently demand an apology if someone of another religion burned copies of the New Testament. Why does’t he see the need for an apology when someone else’s holy book is destroyed.
Or does being Republican now mean “never having to say you’re sorry”?
