Apologies Quotes
The respected and popular mayor of San Antonio confirmed rumors that he was carrying on an extra marital affair:
Apology and explanation for reversing his former view on an issue
The Senator had been illegally frequenting prostitutes and was a regular customer of an infamous DC Madam. The reason this quotation is noteworthy is that it is a stunning example of moral hypocrisy in politics. Vitter ran as a very conservative politician who placed traditional Christian and family values at the forefront of his political philosophy. When his behavior was made public there were calls for his resignation. He refused and instead gave this statement. However, he had been elected to replace Robert Livingston who had been the Speaker of the House but had resigned when he was caught frequenting prostitutes. Vitter’s hypocrisy was all the more hypocritical as he had demanded the resignation of President William Clinton who had engaged in adulterous sex while in office. When he was running for office and his opponent complained that Vitter had been frequenting prostitutes, Vitter said that the accusation was absolutely and completely untrue" and that it was "just crass Louisiana politics”. This reinforced the hypocrisy in that Vitter claimed that one of Clinton’s failings was that he lied about his adulterous affair, while Vitter not only lied, but did so the public for purposes of getting elected. And just a few months before this statement, Vitter proclaimed the importance of abstinence for teenagers and faithfulness for adults. See {625896}.
Justice Blackmun was widely quoted by the press for criticizing his Supreme Court colleagues in a St. Louis speech. The justice believed that he had been misquoted and also quoted out of context. He wrote a letter to his fellow justices.
Wallace had been a supporter of Russia throughout WWII and thought that on balance the Russian Revolution was a constructive historical event. He was very naive naïve the excess of Stalin and thought that the reports of his atrocities and excesses were propaganda. However, when he found out the truth about Stalinist Russia, he became an anti-Communist, and wrote this book. He also supported Dwight D. Eisenhower for President which added to some of the radical right wing distrust of Eisenhower.
The Tuskegee Experiment was a low point in medical research ethics in American history. Black men who had contracted syphilis, were experimented with and not given treatment even after penicillin was developed, while they have never given their consent or in most cases even told they had the disease. Not only did many of them die, but 40 women contracted syphilis from the men who had never been told that they had the disease. The “experiment” was run by the United States Public Health Service.
After this statement was issued by the embassy, a mob stormed the embassy as shown in the graphic. The reason that this statement is an important quotation is that that Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate for President took the situation as an opportunity to attack the President. Specifically he claimed that this statement was an “apology” and it was terrible for America to apologize. The administration and most media fact checkers could not find anything in the statement that was an apology as opposed to as statement of United States policy and practice. Romney and his supporters insisted it was an apology. So the statement itself has become a major historical quotation where people can judge for themselves if indeed it was an apology. There are many who believed that under the circumstances an apology might not have been a bad idea. A few years earlier when a Danish magazine had published some insulting cartoons of The Prophet, riots broke out around the world and dozens of people were killed.
See {641838} for a quote about the policies that she came to regret.
Marlette was inundated by complaints from Muslims for his 2002 cartoon depiction of Muhammad driving a Ryder rental truck like the one used by convicted Oklahoma City terrorist bomber, Timothy McVeigh. The caption was, “What would Muhammad drive?” He was front-page news in Saudi Arabia and other Islamic nations. He received death threats. The Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Muslim World League both demanded an apology. Marlette refused. When he was killed in an automobile crash in July of 2007, many Muslims believed that this was the retribution of Allah.
