TBS’ Samantha Bee is still indignant that her attempts to get noticed last week worked.
It’s your fault, America, that there was even a minor scandal over to her choice to call Ivanka Trump a “feckless c—t.”
“[A] lot of people were offended and angry that I used an epithet to describe the president’s daughter and adviser last week. It is the word I have used on the show many times, hoping to reclaim it. This time I used I see it as an insult. I crossed a line, I regret it, and I do apologize for that,” Bee said Wednesday in what media is inexplicably characterizing as an “apology.”
For good measure, Bee even threw in asides aimed at her normal targets, namely men and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.
“The problem is that many women have heard that word at the worst moments of their lives. A lot of women don’t want that word reclaimed, they want it gone and I don’t blame them. I don’t want to inflict more pain on them,” she continued.
Bee added, “I want this show to be challenging and I want it to be honest, but I never intended it to hurt anyone, except Ted Cruz. Many men were also offended by my use of the word. I do not care about that.”
Like her speech Thursday at the Television Academy Honors, her main complaint is that her remarks on immigration reform were overshadowed by her vulgar, premeditated slur against the president’s daughter — and that’s your fault, America.
“I hate that this distracted from more important issues. I hate that I did something to contribute to the nightmare of 24-hour news cycles that were all white-knuckling through. I should have known that a potty-mouthed insult would be inherently more interesting to them than juvenile immigration policies,” Bee opined.
She added, “I am, I’m really sorry that I said that word but you know what, civility is just nice words. Maybe we should all worry a little bit more about the niceness of our actions.”
Oh, please. Come down from the cross — we could use the wood.
Look, I don’t particularly care whether she apologizes or not. I’m of the mind that comedians should never apologize for lousy jokes. I ask only that they craft better gags.
I do believe, however, that if you do something, you ought to do it well. If Bee really intended to apologize for being bad at her job, and for undermining her own efforts to urge action on immigration reform, she failed. What she offered Wednesday was not an apology.
It was a finger-wagging lecture wrapped in indignation. It was her version of “sorry, not sorry,” faulting her audience for reacting to her own deliberate provocation.
