Thoughtless, Tasteless, and Insensitive

Last night I published a diary entitled "BREAKING:  WaPo Reports Hillary Dead."  The text of the diary linked to a Washington Post story about the passing of Sir Edmund Hillary, the New Zealand explorer who was one of the first to reach the peak of Mount Everest.  I wrote the diary as a swipe at the gleeful corporate media reporting following the Iowa caucuses.  At the time I wrote it, it seemed a perfect foil to parody the reports of the demise of Senator Clinton's career.

I was wrong.

That diary was exactly what this diary calls it: thoughtless, tasteless, and insensitive.  Hillary Clinton, like Barack Obama, John Edwards, and all of the other candidates, embodies the hopes and dreams of millions of progressives.  Her demise, physical or political, would for many, many people mean the end of those dreams.

I have no problem at all imagining the grief the headline must have provoked.  I didn't take the time to imagine it before hitting the publish button.  I should have.  

There were a handful of commenters who thought the diary clever, but the majority were outraged.  My point was absolutely lost because of the way I presented it -- and it was frankly nowhere near important enough to justify the idiotic way in which I did so.  

This is not a "sorry if you were offended" apology.  If you were offended, you were right to be, and deserve my apology.  If you weren't offended, I apologize even so.  

I won't always succeed in being more thoughtful, but I will make the effort.