Apologizing to the wrong person

When you work with children, you learn to spot when you're being manipulated. Example: The other day I had to break up a fight between two students alternately accusing each other of name-calling. One steadfastly maintained she hadn't said anything while the other admitted he had insulted her. The girl then, reluctantly, confessed to having mumbled "something" under her breath. Busted.

So too with Bishop Williamson. The man is on tape denying the Holocaust, gets the face-slap he justly deserves, and now that he has been resurrected from the dustbin by a schizophrenic Pope and people are upset, he attempts to smooth things over by writing an apology. A good idea, except that he apologized to THE VATICAN. You know, for embarrassing them.

Uh huh. See, here's the thing, Bishop Dick. When you insult or offend someone, the FIRST thing to do is apologize to THEM, not your parents, company, or immediate circle of friends because you made them look bad. That kind of undercuts the whole exercise, particularly as it suggests that the problem with your statements was not their fact-free content or your stupidity in saying them, but that "somehow", it came back to bite the Pope in the ass.

As I tell my kids, "Let's work on this." So, Dick, I suggest you keep a journal of ways you're working on improving your dimwitedness and try not to be a twit in the future. Or, if you're really so gung-ho about Holocaust revisionism (and ditching Vatican II) that you just go form your own Church of Pius (or should that be Pious Church?)

Now if only the Pope would stop talking out of both sides of his mouth...