Politics

Michelle Malkin, S.E. Cupp Unimpressed By Keith Olbermann’s Apology

The word “sorry” doesn’t seem to be enough anymore.

In the wake of the heavily publicized Sandra Fluke/Rush Limbaugh debacle, CurrentTV host Keith Olbermann took it upon himself to sort of apologize to two of the women he has publicly insulted in recent years and address Kirsten Powers’s recent Daily Beast column about the media’s double standard on conservative and liberal men making misogynistic statements. Though he admitted some of his comments about Michelle Malkin and S.E. Cupp weren’t “nice,” he spoke of the instances with hostility more than anything else.

“I’ve been accused of using similar language [to Limbaugh] regarding conservative bloggers Michelle Malkin and SE Cupp,” Olbermann said, going on to note that these women were veteran commentators and not to be confused with private citizens like Fluke. “In the case of Ms. Cupp, nearly a year ago she was ranting about the evils of Planned Parenthood…I tweeted, ‘On so many levels, she’s a perfect demonstration of the necessity of the work Planned Parenthood does.”

Olbermann added that Powers “transformed” this into saying he was insinuating that Cupp should have been aborted by her parents, “which is a bald-faced lie.” He clarified that he meant Cupp’s parents could have used the counseling services provided by Planned Parenthood “rather than get the results they did.”

“My point was that 97 percent of what Planned Parenthood does is healthcare, family planning, birth control, counseling, and the like and that Ms. Cupp’s parents obviously could have used somebody’s help in determining how they could improve their chances of raising a well-adjusted child or whether they should have had children at all. Was it a nice thing to say? No. Was it sexist? Hardly.”

Olbermann also added that because of the whole “initials thing” to S.E. Cupp’s public identity, he had no idea for a long time that she was a woman. Considering all the information out there on her, that just seems lazy.

None of this resonated with Cupp, who tweeted in response to Mediaite’s article on the apology, “I could hardly hear the “apology” through the din of insults. @mediaite @tommyxtopher” and “It’s my parents who deserve the apology. They dared to have me w/o consulting PP first. @mediaite @tommyxtopher.”

Olbermann also said he should not have called conservative pundit Michelle Malkin a “big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it,” which he argued is not misogynistic because it merely means “there’s no human being inside Michelle Malkin anymore, just meat.” But as Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher put it, “the addition of the lipstick made the crack gender-specific and inarguably hostile.”

Malkin’s Twitter response to this was, “No @mediaite, @KeithOlbermann never apologized to ME. He apologized to a CAMERA to make his crap go away.”

Though Olbermann is going to suspend his “Worst Persons” segment again, possibly indefinitely, he was more combative than apologetic towards Malkin and Cupp, so it’s unlikely that his show will become any more civil without the roast series.

TAGS: keith olbermann | kirsten powers | michelle malkin | s.e. cupp

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