In looking into the whole “hug the tar baby” thing, I find citations of Tony Snow using the phrase as far back as 1999. It seems it’s a pet phrase of his.
On the way to work this morning, I was listening to Rachael Maddow, and she explained that yesterday, she’d called Snow to task for using “tar baby” because, although it is a phrase meaning “sticky or inextricable situation,” it’s also a racial epithet. Later in the show yesterday, she used the word “bohunk,” which she didn’t realize was also an offensive epithet. So today she apologized for it, laughed and moved on.
It was so easy. It astonishes me that people don’t know that apologizing is easy. It is a natural thing, because sooner or later, we all need to apologize. It can be discomfitting to approach, but is often pleasant in the hearing.
The current administration seems structured around the idea that apologizing is offensive and wrong. “Stay the course” is not just their watchword in Iraq, it’s their watchword in everything they do, because they cannot and must not be wrong.
It’s not the worst thing about Bushco, but it may be the most inhuman.
