Extremely Lame

Today’s word is nonpology, and it’s brought to you by the letters V and P.

According to the Urban Dictionary, the nonpology is “an insincere apology or expression of regret, often blaming the aggrieved party for being offended or bringing up an irrelevant topic to distract.”

While that’s a pretty succinct definition, I think that it’s leaving some nuance out of it, especially with regard to recent trends in nonpologies. The most recent nonpology comes from Vice President Cheney, after his comments where he said that he had Cheneys on both side of his family tree, and that he wasn’t even from West Virginia.

His nonpology stated, “The Vice President’s offhand comment was not meant to hurt anyone. On reflection, he concluded that it was an inappropriate attempt at humor that he should not have made.”

Note the phrase that pays there, “an inappropriate attempt at humor.” That’s code for “We’re sorry that you got your panties in a twist over our taking cheap pot shots at you so we’re using this statement not to apologize, but to mock you for having no sense of humor.”

We’ve seen this same sort of mocking apology recently with Liz Trotta after she laughingly wished that both Osama bin Laden and Barack Obama would just do us all a favor and get assassinated. The nonpology that followed not only had the accusation that people who were offended have no sense of humor, but she also directed her classy “apology” to “anyone [she] has offended,” and not to, you know, the person she said she’d like assassinated. Man, she’s really got the sarcasm going on in her nonpology. It’s pretty hard to see how anyone can come off as any more insincere.