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November 1, 2004
The U.S. polls had barely closed last week before Sorry Everybody appeared online, posting penitent photos from Kerry supporters. "Sorry, world (we tried)," reads one typically hand-scribbled sign in a posted photograph.
In a move that could keep the Net as polarized as the electoral map, Bush supporters responded with their own site, We'reNotSorry.com. The Web site offers a more red-state vision of the election, displaying photographs of people with messages such as, "Hey World, try thanking us sometime."
"There is no reason for us to apologize to the rest of the world because of our belief in Freedom and Democracy," the antiapology site tells visitors.
The Web has been home to some of the most vigorous and passionate political campaigning over the past few months, and the two sites are putting a more human face on the debate.
So far, actual apologies (and nonapologies) are outnumbering the online victory dances.
About 12 pages of photos supporting Bush had been posted as of mid-Friday afternoon, compared with 238 images of people expressing their regret over the election results.
Both sites are run anonymously. Sorry Everybody's operator noted that the site was created to reassure people in other countries that dissent was still active in America--and also because the idea was funny.
"Rarely do people on the Internet apologize," the site's operator wrote on a "Frequently Asked Questions" page. "I thought it was high time. The world needs to understand that there are people in America who don't like what our government is doing."
The antiapology site's creator says in a Web log that We'reNotSorry was started as a response to the Sorry Everybody site.
The sites aren't going unrecognized beyond U.S. borders. Another site, called Apologies Accepted, is posting pictures of people sympathizing with the Kerry supporters.
"We up here in Canada know you tried your hardest," reads a sign displayed in one woman's snapshot. "I got a spare couch...if any of y'all need a place to hang out for 4 years."
help they offered during the founding of this country.
The American people are kept in the dark about things done in their name - the Government should apologize to them.
Maybe they should pay a "life tax" to the URSA just to keep breathing. The Brits are the only friends we need over there. Have they said "thank you" for the Marshall Plan we gave them after WWII? Ungrateful, cheese-eating, Euros.
just war.
Every single president since Theodore Roosevelt has a legacy of war........Every one! Read any hisory lately????
Bush won because his campaign playing on the fears of America resonated better with more Americans than Kerry's campaign of playing on the fears of America.
The whole country is going to be in "sorry" shape until the unabashed partisans realize the world isn't red or blue. It's undeniably purple.
Still, it's not all bad. The fact that people are getting involved (if over heated) is a healthy sign.
There may be hope for Democracy after all.
We broke our own laws and the laws of the world when we invaded Iraq.
In both world wars we (the U.S.) got to the "game" late; well after many Europeans had already given their lives. We also nuked Japan when it was not necessary to do so and in the process created a new enemy we would not have otherwise had.
So buck up buddy and take your fantasies on down the road. Maybe you can sell them to the sabar rattlers in Washington. They eat that **** up.
- the hell with the Hallmark cards
- by jameskpolka November 15, 2004 11:39 AM PST
- An apology isn't the issue, nor will it fix anything.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(22 Comments)We are at an American and a world moment where Hurt Feelings must be balanced against severed limbs and corpses of soldiers and civilians, and I think we should just skip the Hallmark card and go straight to housebreaking America's rabid and toxic foreign policy.
I voted for Kerry, but as the Better of Two Plagues. He gave no clue that he understood the mess America finds itself in, and if elected gave every hint that he would have been Clintonesque in failing to summon up the leadership and political courage to do something functional about it.
Once upon a time at a moment of American and world crisis and fear, the Democratic party gave us Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and followed him up with Harry Truman. Now the best they can offer us is Kerry. Every apology we feel moved to send our neighbors abroad should note the Democrats' leadership meltdown very clearly. The nominating process bubbled up the candidate with the finest hair and teeth, and the best access to enormous sums of cash.
History may have made us The New Rome, but Rome's example and, just within living memory, the British Empire's example give us One Chance Now to choose clearly and consciously not to repeat Rome's or Britain's thuggish, violent, selfish, bigotted and cruel world policies. Will we live with our neighbors in fair trade, compromise and some semblence of understanding, or will we make America (as Stephen Douglas promised in the Lincoln-Douglas debates) The Terror of the World?
Bush and his right-wing nut job cronies chose to make America The Terror of the World. This policy will not simply generate Hurt Feelings around the world. As the population of people with nothing to lose expands, they will increasingly look at America and ask: What can we take from them, and how can we use the same means America uses to take everything away from us?