Political apologies rarely work, still wind up taking ‘hit’ for trash-talk

There’s something about any attempt by a political official to apologize for saying something stupid that always manages to come off as insincere – it winds up sounding like the only thing you’re “sorry” for is getting caught!

Somewhere, a political operative thinks this is clever

That certainly is the case for the Illinois Republican County Chairman’s Association – which how has on its Facebook page a prominent post apologizing for the fact that they let a lame gag get put on their site to begin with – one that attempted to trash the four members of Congress whom President Donald Trump has engaged in trash-talk against.

IT SEEMS THAT Republican-leaning political operatives created a graphic labelling the four as “the Jihad Squad” and implying just how subversive we ought to consider them to be.

“If you don’t agree with their socialist ideology, you’re racist,” is what we’re told. Implying that Donald Trump is totally justified in all of his trash talk against the women – whom the one thing they have in common is that they’re not white.

The graphic, which actually is a parody of sorts of the advertising posters for the “Charlie’s Angels” films (the more recent movies, not the ‘70’s era television show), is labeled as being put together by the national Republican County Chairman’s Association, which then had it put on the sites of their various affiliated organizations.

The original motivating image?

Which led to the Illinois chapter early Monday publicly removing the post, with chapter President Mark Shaw saying the post was “unauthorized” and, “I am sorry if anyone who saw the image was offended by the contents.”

NOW FOR ALL I know, Shaw may well be sincere in his apology. He may well be shuddering at the thought that he’s affiliated politically with the kind of people who’d think this ad parody is somehow clever. Even Illinois Republican Chairman Timothy Schneider was embarrassed, saying he thinks the graphic, “does not reflect … the Republican Party’s values.”

But I don’t doubt there are people who consider themselves good and loyal Republicans who have absolutely no problem with this kind of image being spewed and who will now think the “problem” is that the GOP has people who can’t get on board with their initiative.

Would Farrah, Jaclyn and Kate be offended?

As for the parody, I think it’s tacky depicting Rep, Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., wielding a shotgun, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., packing a pistol, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., looking like an angry be-yotch and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, bursting into flames.

But even more so, I think it comes across as downright lame. It’s almost the kind of image I’d expect that 12-year-olds would find amusing. But then again, there are times I wonder if the mentality of our political people has delved down to the level of pre-teens who think fart jokes are funny.

WHICH MEANS I can almost sympathize with the Republican operatives who now have to address this image and try to explain away how anyone could seriously have thought it would possibly attract anyone to the political cause.

I don’t doubt it will keep the hard-core ideologues aligned. But then again, that may well be the political strategy for the 2020 election cycle.

Make sure the ideologues turn out in force to back the re-election of Donald Trump and anybody whose presence would not conflict with ‘the Donald,’ and scare off anybody who’d be inclined to want to raise the elevation of political discourse these days.

Political spots certainly have changed

But then again, I also don’t doubt there are some who are ideologically-inclined to want to sink the level of discourse to this level – it’s much easier to understand. Four crazy broads! All of them with big mouths!  And most importantly, none of them white!

NOT EXACTLY AN issues-based campaign theme. Not something that would bring out the intellect in would-be voters.

More like something simple that would reduce the election cycle down to something we can either laugh at – or lambast those who don’t think it’s funny as being mere “snowflakes.”

Which in-and-of-itself is a political label that gets used far too often.

Although I think one anonymous Internet commenter may have stated it best – this “Jihad Squad” graphic is just too stupid for anyone thinking about voting to take seriously. Although we’ll have to see if it’s too stupid that it winds up costing anybody a vote come Election Day.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Some Republicans are tossing out their own response, trying to claim Democrats are no better. They're citing a blurb posted on the website of the Kankakee County Democratic Party that equates those "Make America Great Again: caps with the pointy hoods of the Ku Klux Klan -- if only those hoods were an obnoxious bright-red. Crain's Chicago Business is reporting that Democrats are in a similar circumstance for their Internet attempt at humor. Although I can't help but wonder who is really offended by the gag.

Send Trump back? Who’d want him!

President Donald Trump is an ethnic mixture of Scottish and German – the latter of which cause some people to deride him by reminding us at every chance they get that the family name originally was ‘Drumpf.’

TRUMP: Deport Donald? Who'd want him!

Back in the days when they were the immigrants, and the name change was made to come up with something they thought sounded more “American.”

SO NOW THAT the president is on a rhetorical kick of wanting to deride members of Congress whom he thinks aren’t American-enough to belong in this country – literally saying they should “go back to the broken and crime-infested countries they came from” – perhaps we ought to give it a thought.

Should we take this sorry excuse of a U.S president, revoke his American citizenship, and ship him off to either Scotland or Germany? Send him back “home,” so to speak!

Actually, that would be a ludicrous fantasy – and not because of the fact that Trump by birth is a Noo Yawker from the borough of Queens (even though he’d like us to think he’s the ultimate in Manhattan sophistication).

More it’s ludicrous because I suspect that neither Scotland nor Germany would want anything to do with The Donald or anyone in his pompous, egotistical family. They probably think they dodged a bullet of sorts by having his family emigrate away from them all those generations ago.

OCASIO-CORTEZ: Not easily silenced

EITHER THAT, OR maybe they’d concoct some sort of scheme by which they could confiscate his immense family wealth for themselves – thereby reducing the Trump family to penniless status.

Not that I expect this to happen either. I suspect our society is stuck with the Trump ego – and is going to have to live with the shame of knowing it really was possible for a vocal minority of voters to actually prevail in the 2016 election cycle.

PRESSLEY: Deport her to … Cincinnati?

A vocal minority that probably thinks it is entirely clever for Trump to go around using his Twitter account to spew nonsense like he did this past weekend – where he derided four outspoken members of the Democratic caucus of Congress for, basically, not treating their own ethnic and racial origins as something they ought to be greatly ashamed of.

TLAIB: Serving Michigan proudly

For what it’s worth, he was talking about Rep. Ilan Omar, D-Minn., who was born in Somalia and lived in a refugee camp in Kenya before coming to this country as a 12-year-old and ultimately settling in Minneapolis.

BUT THEN HE lumped in three other members of Congress – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan – as others who don’t really belong here.

All are U.S.-born, and in the case of Ocasio-Cortez may be Puerto Rican-ethnic but was raised in the suburbs of New York City. Only in the mini-mind of Donald Trump would they somehow not belong here, where I suspect his real objection to them having a prominence in society is due to the fact he regards many women as being decorative objects – and nothing else.

Think about it seriously. What are we going to do – deport Pressley back to her birth city of Cincinnati? It’s nonsense-talk like this that causes many to deride him as the “twit who Tweets” and to regard his constant use of Twitter as a true social embarrassment on our society – far worse than anything that any of the Congressional women has had to say.

ALTHOUGH IF YOU really want the truth, I suspect his attack on the Congresswomen was a deliberate tactic in its’ timing – as in Sunday, the day that was supposed to see federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials conducting many raids to deport all kinds of foreigners whom he also thinks don’t really belong “here.”

OMAR: Learned English off American TV

It seems the raids fizzled out, and really didn’t amount to much of anything.

Yet instead of now wondering how full of hot air Trump is for all his immigration raid trash talk, the focus is instead going toward Trump wanting to kick Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez out of the continental U.S.

Although even that wouldn’t achieve much – because Puerto Rico is a U.S. commonwealth. Meaning even if she were sent back to the Caribbean island, she’d still be within U.S. reach and more than capable of speaking out against Trump nonsense on oh so many issues. Nobody silences AOC that easily!

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EDITOR'S NOTE: It's worth pointing out that everybody here is standing before, and serving the interests of, the very same U.S. flag.