There are so many interesting things out there (apologies, pardons, STDs, war, etc.) that I had to do a Bookworm Beat to share all of them with you.
Samantha Bee apologizes as only a narcissist can. One of the surest signs that someone is a narcissist is the fact that he or she cannot offer a heartfelt apology. Narcissists only traffic in non-apology apologies.
For example, if a narcissist breaks your vase, the narcissist will not say “I am so sorry I broke your vase.” Instead, the narcissist will say “I’m sorry you’re upset that your vase is broken.” Translated, this means that the narcissist is sorry that you are angry at the narcissist. The narcissist, in his own mind, has done nothing to merit this anger. It was undoubtedly your fault, in some way as yet unknown, that the narcissist was forced to break your vase. And it’s a damn shame for the narcissist’s peace of mind you’re upset about it.
Samantha Bee is a narcissist. The appropriate thing for Bee to have done after calling Ivanka Trump the C-word, would have been to say “I am so sorry I called Ivanka Trump the C-word. It was crude and uncalled for. I did it for effect. I was not thinking and I am ashamed of myself for what I have done.” Instead, Bee, a true narcissist, essentially doubled down.
She first complained that people were mad at her. They should not be mad, she implied, because she is trying to reclaim the C-word. Her mistake was in having momentarily abandoned this reclamation by wasting the word as an insult to Ivanka (who, Bee implies, deserved whatever insults came her way).
Having explained to her own satisfaction that people were too dumb to understand her feminist linguistic goals, Bee was ready to issue Phase 1 of the non-apology apology: “I crossed the line, I regret it, and I do apologize for that.” In other words, she’s not at all sorry that she launched a vile insult against Ivanka. She’s simply sorry that she got caught crossing the line.
It only got worse from there. Phase 2 was for Bee to say she was sorry that people didn’t understand that she was talking about immigration (how stupid of them). She was sorry that stupid people didn’t realize that her mis-use of the C-word (remember, she’s reclaiming it) obscured the fact that everything she did was “for the children.”
Bee ended by once again blaming Ivanka and all the other stupid conservatives for forcing her to issue the non-apology apology: “Civility is just nice words. Maybe we should all worry a little bit more about the niceness of our actions.”
As I said, she’s a narcissist.
Also, if you want to have fun watching a narcissist not apologize, I hope you’ve been following Bill Clinton’s travails as he tries to function in a #MeToo world. You can just see him thinking to himself that nobody was demanding these ridiculous apologies back in the 1990s. Clinton is not sorry he destroyed Monica Lewinsky’s life — although she was complicit in her own seduction, Bill and Hillary went out of their way to destroy her reputation. He’s not sorry about Pedophile Island. He’s not sorry about assaulting and raping women. He’s just really, really sorry people nowadays keep demanding that he apologize. [Read more…]