Magical Mythical Tour

Number one on the list of lies The Rominee has decided to make central to his campaign is that Obama tours the world apologizing for America. While loosening his hatband for ring-intossing, Mitt even named his autobiography "No Apology" (which, it turns out, applies best to his tour of duty at Bain; and, perhaps, for changing every political and moral opinion he's ever held. And for his latest stupid statement, whatever it might be.) In its easy falsifiability the claim is perfectly emblematic not only of the R nominee but of every RWS™ toward whose posterior haunches he regularly kneels, osculatorily. And, a characteristic also inseparable from everything they say, it's hypocritical, as we read in this column:

And so it was that after some US troops were found using the Koran for target practice, George W. Bush apologized to the prime minister of Iraq:

"He apologized for that in the sense that he said that we take it very seriously," White House press secretary Dana Perino said. "We are concerned about the reaction. We wanted them to know that the president knew that this was wrong."

Bush apologized for Japanese-American internment (sorry, Michelle Malkin).

Here he is in Africa on the legacy of slavery:

"Human beings delivered, sorted, weighed, branded with marks of commercial enterprises and loaded as cargo on a voyage without return," Mr. Bush said. "One of the largest migrations in history was also one of the greatest crimes of history." The president recited a litany of Africans and African Americans who made contributions to American society, from the arts to politics: abolitionist Frederick Douglass, slave-poet Phillis Wheatley and Martin Luther King Jr.

"The stolen sons and daughters of Africa helped to awaken the conscience of America," he said. Mr. Bush did not apologize for slavery but noted Americans throughout history "clearly saw this sin and called it by name."

The difference between "apologizing for America" and acknowledging when it makes mistakes is evidently a bit too subtle for some of our acquaintances on the right. The latter, it seems to me, whether from a president of a country or from any human being to another, causes a gain in stature, both for the acknowledger and the acknowledgee. It opens ways for communication; and, where there are wounds, for healing.

What's so wrong with that?

(Answer from the right: irrelevant. For Mitt Romney and his teabagging followers, lies work. So keep 'em coming, especially when it's all you got.)