This week Rep. Virginia Foxx, a grandmother, called the murder of Matthew Shepard, specifically the two convicted murderers’ intent to kill a man for being homosexual, “a hoax.” Mrs. Shepard, Matthew’s mother, who has suppported hate-crime bills since her son’s murder, was in chambers at the time. After a roar against Mrs. Foxx’s blithe use of the word ‘hoax’ ensued, she issued a tepid bathwater ‘apology’ which many saw as an insincere version of, ‘Sorry about that, if I hurt your feelings.’
In the Woody Allen film, Annie Hall, little nerdy Allen wins an argument with a disagreeable person over who knows McLuhan’s work better… when the philosopher Marshall McLuhan himself steps out from behind a standee and stands up for Allen’s point of view against the snotty professor.
Excerpt from Annie Hall:
MAN: It’s the influence of television. Now, now Marshall McLuhan deals with it in terms of it being a, a high– high intensity, you understand? A hot medium–
WOODY ALLEN: What I wouldn’t give for a large sock with horse manure in it.
MAN: — as opposed to the truth which he [sees as the] media or–
WOODY ALLEN: What can you do when you get stuck on a movie line with a guy like this behind you?
MAN: Now, Marshall McLuhan–
WOODY ALLEN: You don’t know anything about Marshall McLuhan’s work–
MAN: Really? Really? I happen to teach a class at Columbia called TV, Media and Culture, so I think that my insights into Mr. McLuhan, well, have a great deal of validity.
WOODY ALLEN: Oh, do you?
MAN: Yeah.
WOODY ALLEN: Oh, that’s funny, because I happen to have Mr. McLuhan right here. Come over here for a second?
MAN: Oh–
WOODY ALLEN: Tell him.
MARSHALL McLUHAN: — I heard, I heard what you were saying. You, you know nothing of my work. How you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing.
WOODY ALLEN: Boy, if life were only like this.
Yes, if life were only like that where a voice, sotto vocé from offstage, would cue the clueless one to say/ do a more elegant thing rather than wallow around in the ‘large sock’ Allen references. Not sure when politicians began making the kind of sidewinder apologies that their own mothers would not have accepted from them without sending them back to the corner… or the woodshed.
Representative Foxx could have put forth her strongest argument against the proposed law and have made a straightforward apology to Matthew Shepard’s mother for Foxx’s ‘hoax’ squall, both. In fact a sincere apology would have strengthened Mrs. Foxx’s position from a mediocre, “I definitely dont want this law,” to expressing a strong statesmanlike deep regret to have to vote against a proposed law considering the tremendous pain still carried by those who loved Matthew Shepard.
It doesnt have to be one or the other. It can be… and/and. Dignity granted and decisiveness given.
See my first editorial cartoon here…