JustASC

Roger Ailes has apologized to the Anti-Defamation League for his use of the expression “Nazi attitudes” to describe NPR executives in an interview with Howard Kurtz, and the ADL has accepted his apology.

“I was of course ad-libbing and should not have chosen that word,” Ailes wrote in a letter to Abe Foxman, ADL’s national director. “but I was angry at the time because of NPR’s willingness to censor Juan Williams for not being liberal enough.”

Foxman, a Holocaust survivor, replied: “I welcome Roger Ailes apology, which is as sincere as it is heartfelt. Nazi comparisons of this nature are clearly inappropriate and offensive. While I wish Roger had never invoked that terminology, I appreciate his efforts to immediately reach out and to retract his words before they did any further harm.”

I agree that Nazi comparisons, when you are not actually referring to perpetrators of genocide, are inappropriate and offensive. But such analogies are a crime against the language, the historical record, and the targets of the remarks themselves, not against the Jews.

Apologizing to Foxman suggests that this is a Jewish thing, and the only reason to apologize is to assuage Jewish feelings. Ailes and anyone else who abuses the analogy should really be apologizing to everybody on earth, for their incredible lack of proportion.