Okay, now the Massachusetts Senate race has gotten so out of hand that Scott Brown, the Republican incumbent, has actually apologized for something he said. It’s not a good apology, but better than the last one of his SorryWatch wrote about.

Brown told a crowd in Taunton that people appearing in Elizabeth Warren ads about asbestos deaths are actors. “A lot of them are paid. We hear that maybe they pay actors. Listen, you can get surrogates and go out and say your thing.” Not like the Brown campaign. “We have regular people in our commercials. No one is paid. They are regular folks that reach out to us and say she is full of it.”

Tailings pile at asbestos mine in Quebec. Probably played by a francophone actor.

Unfortunately for Brown’s rumor-based reality, reporters quickly contacted people who appeared in those ads to see if they were paid actors. No, they were indeed family members of asbestos victims. Ginny Jackson, whose husband died of mesothelioma, said Brown had “sunk to a new low.” John English, whose father died, said “Let Scott Brown tell me to my face that I am nothing but a paid actor, and I’ll set him straight on what it was like to watch my father suffocate to death.” Steven Yapp, who also lost a relative, said Brown’s remarks were disrespectful and “cruel.”

Amongst regular folks.

So Brown apologized, if not like a man, at least like a man with a staff. His campaign issued a statement that said “It was wrong for me to have jumped to those conclusions and I apologize to those I offended.”

A baby step forward. He says he was wrong. He apologizes, which is better than the “regrets” of the last apology. But his apology is “to those he offended.” What about those he misinformed? And those who want political campaigns conducted on a higher level? To say nothing of the disappointed actors who were hoping for paid gigs in Warren ads.