Chris Matthews offered some chipper election-night commentary about Superstorm Sandy: “I’m so glad we had that storm last week!” When his seatmate Rachel Maddow responded with a strangled, “ooh,” Matthews clarified: “No — politically, I should say. Not in terms of hurting people. The storm brought in possibilities for good politics.” Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro promptly called the remark “a stupid statement from a stupid person” and other NYC leaders sputtered their horror.

Last night, Matthews apologized.

Let’s parse!

1. Starting off with “I was on last night for 10 hours straight” is not a good lead. Saying you’re not going to use exhaustion as an excuse, right after telling us how exhausted you were, does not inspire confidence in the authenticity and self-awareness of the apology. If “it was a terrible thing to say, period,” why not actually USE the period? Why not refrain from adding qualifiers? The tone is heartfelt, and the eyes are puppy-ish, but the words do not scan.

2. Many people around the country would disagree with Matthews’s assessment that “it’s not until you read the local newspapers around here” that you knew how bad the devastation was — somehow other people, including those who lived through Katrina, found out just how horrible Sandy was without having read the Staten Island Advance.

3. Calling yourself out as a Jersey boy, yet saying you weren’t really aware of how bad things were in Jersey, despite, y’know, all your family still in Jersey, is a little tin-eared.

4. Claiming you were “so enmeshed in politics” is not an excuse. We all have our enmeshments. Enmeshings. Enmeshibles. I am enmeshed in writing, childrearing and waiting with bated breath for the Firefly reunion show. Enmeshedness does not give one the right to talk out one’s butt about other things.

5. A nugget of superb apology in the middle of the spew! Matthews says that he did not think about his words or about the very real losses people suffered. He makes it clear he knows his words hurt. Recognizing and articulating the impact of what you’ve done is an essential part of saying you’re sorry.

6. Aargh! Then Matthews blows it again! He starts spewing verbiage, much like the rising East River tides that swamped Avenues C and D, that sweeps away the bit of good apology. He’d originally said 10 words: “The storm brought in possibilities for good politics.” He uses a lot more than 10 words to say that he was trying to say that the storm brought bipartisanship, and bad is bad and good is good (what?).  Dude. Just stop.

7. “I intend to take serious steps to show I am sincere on this.” He should have clarified what these steps will be. Money? Volunteering? Duct-taping his piehole?

8. Fine, we do like hearing him call himself stupid. It’s always endearing when an apologizer calls himself stupid…and so forcefully, too.

Apologies do not live in a vacuum. If you’ve made similar mistakes in the past, your apology should be an opportunity for self-reflection about your own patterns. But for Matthews, not so much. The structure of this apology is clearly Matthews’s apology template. Compare his Sandy apology to his 2008 apology for saying of Hillary Clinton, “the reason she’s a U.S. senator, the reason she’s a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner, is her husband messed around.”

Same apology structure!

In 2012, he starts with exhaustion as his non-excuse excuse. In 2008 he started with the country’s mood (“we’re in a time of a lot of frustration in this country — Iraq, of course, the lack of healthcare for people who work every day, gas prices going up, the weakening economy that scares us every day, and I come on here every night and try to wrestle with these frustrations”) as his non-excuse excuse. (Plus, like Jesus, he suffers for all of us!) In 2012, Matthews observes that he made his slip at 3am; in 2008, he observed that he works “without a script.” In 2012, he tells us he meant to make a heartrending statement about bipartisanship in a time of disaster; in 2008 he told us he meant to say from his heart, which failed to control his mouth, that he is “obviously in support of the right of women — of all people — to full equality and respect for their ambitions.” Again, the clarification took up more words than the original statement (although his original statements about Clinton also involved calling her a “stripteaser” and “witchy”). Just as he meant to say in 2012 that bad is bad and good is good, in 2008 he meant to say that Clinton “like any great politician, took advantage of a crisis to prove herself,” and used that crisis as a springboard for her political career. Just like John McCain! Because one COULD say that McCain owed his career to being shot down over North Vietnam and tortured for years, but to say that would be to ignore his “courage and guts” — apparently the self-same courage and guts it takes to have a philandering husband, and this is not at all condescending or reaching in any way! Why do you think that? Is your lady-brain fuzzy and confused? Matthews nobly understands how you could think he was “dismissive,” but you would be wrong. It must be the wash of estrogen.

At least in 2012 Matthews apologized in only two days, rather than the 10 in 2008 for which he claimed that he was merely invoking Hillary’s historical record, and the drumbeat of opprobrium from folks including Gloria Steinem and the presidents of NOW, the Feminist Majority and the National Women’s Political Caucus, got louder.

We look forward to checking back with Matthews in 2016, when he clarifies what he MEANT when he said that the global-warming-triggered California tsunami was awesome for surfers or that Sasha Obama’s victory in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search was a triumph of affirmative action.