Armstrong Williams: I'm Sorry

With CBS News issuing their long-awaited report on "Rathergate" and stealing the spotlight, Armstrong Williams couldn't have picked a better time to get caught taking money from the Department of Education to promote the No Child Left Behind Act. Afterall, who has time to worry about one little contracting arrangement between a smalltime pundit like Armstrong and the government? Well ... I do. That's who.

Today, Armstrong's newspaper column was devoted to apologizing -- at least sort of apologizing -- for his "bad judgment" and explaining the circumstances that caused him to exercise such "poor judgment". After giving his abbreviated side of the story, Armstrong writes:

I accept full responsibility for my lack of good judgment. I am paying the price. Tribune Media has cancelled my column. And I have learned a valuable lesson. I just want to assure you that this will never happen again, and to ask for your forgiveness.

I hope that we can put this mistake behind us, and that I can continue to bring the same unique and impassioned perspective that I brought to this space in the past.

How can Armstrong claim to have accepted responsibility when he hasn't even acknowledged what he did? In a 622 word column, he refers to his lawbreaking as poor or bad judgment 6 times, and a mistake once. I'm not the only one who picked up on the "bad judgment" line. The Nation's David Corn writes about it in his "Capital Games" column "Armstrong Williams: I Am Not Alone"...

After our segment finished, Chavez and I headed to the green room, and there he was: Armstrong Williams. He was waiting to go on air to defend himself.... I shook my head and said, "Armstrong, Armstrong, Armstrong...." He was quick with his main talking point: "It was bad judgment, Dave. Bad judgment." His phone rang. He answered it, said hello, and then told the person on the other end, "It was bad judgment. You know, just bad judgment." I was reminded that in addition to being a pundit, Williams, a leading African-American conservative and Clarence Thomas protege, is a PR specialist with his own firm. Not too long ago, Michael Jackson called him for advice. Now he had himself for a client, and, heeding conventional crisis-management strategy, he was practicing strict message discipline: bad judgment, bad judgment, bad judgment.

From where I sit, Armstrong hasn't learned a thing! This wasn't a case of bad judgment, it was a case of deliberately violating the law. Armstrong's crimes were caused by his greed and arrogance, not his naïvety. And instead of showing some humility and trying to make this right by truly accepting responsibility and suffering the consequences for his actions, Armstrong is trying to spin his way out of trouble, and actually profit further from his crimes. As I blogged here, as of Friday, the USA Today story detailing his payola payments from the DOE was plastered on the front page of his website. A check of the website today has him touting an upcoming interview with President Bush. This man isn't ashamed of what he did or of being caught.

In his column, he claims to be paying the price, but how? Because Tribune cancelled his syndication deal, several newspapers decided to stop publishing his column, and TV One has temporarily decided to stop showing his television program? That hardly qualifies as paying the price. Armstrong hasn't paid his debt to society for his crimes, and he hasn't given the money back to the Department of Education. He really hasn't paid anything!

I'm convinced Armstrong's promise that "this will never happen again" either means he promises he won't get caught again, or he promises he won't accept any more government contracts. If I had my way, this would never happen again because Armstrong would never again have a TV or radio show, or a published newspaper column.

Having read dozens of his columns, I reject the notion that Armstrong Williams' perspective is unique -- he not more than a typical Black conservative paid to parrot the RNC's talking points. There's nothing unique about him.

Where Are The Black Conservative Organizations?

Had this happened to Clarence Page, Juan Williams, William Raspberry, Leonard Pitts, Jr., Derrick Z. Jackson, or DeWayne Wickham, the CONservative Black mouthpieces from Project 21, Jesse Lee Peterson's BOND Organization, and Niger Innis's CORE would be jumping in front of every camera with a red light on it, issuing press releases by the ream, and sparing no expense to denounce a Black liberal caught taking money from the government to push a social program. If this were a liberal broadcaster -- say Al Franken -- you wouldn't be able to shut the CONservatives up until he was doing time behind bars.

Update: Thinking I had a clever title, I wrote "Armstrong Williams On The Wrong Side" on Friday, Jan 7th at 11:43 p.m. La Shawn Barber wrote "Armstrong Williams: The Wrong Side" on Saturday, Jan 8th at 10:26 a.m. Because I don't think La Shawn would steal my blog title, I chalked it up to a simple coincidence.

But then I wrote "Armstrong Williams: I'm Sorry" today at 5:59 p.m. and just finished reading (11:26 p.m.) Michelle Malkin's "RATHERGATE VS. PAIDPUNDITGATE" posted today at 4:07 p.m. By golly, we are making some of the same points.

Don't get me wrong, both of these ladies are better writers than me. But they are ultra-conservatives. Am I starting to think like them or what? Maybe it's time for me to step away from the blog and call it a night. This is downright frightening!