We’ve gotten requests to do the apology/non-apology/semi-apology of Paul LePage, Governor of Maine.

Non-apologies are a LePage specialty, as we’ll see. We try not to do non-apologies but there is also a despicable phony apology in the current mess, so we’ll take a look.

Why the uproar: LePage gave a long long speech on January 6. He described drug dealers coming from outside Maine (from vile places like Connecticut, the so-called “Nutmeg State”), selling heroin, committing violence, and getting women pregnant. He did not identify the race of these dealers, but said they had names like “D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty.” Which people thought was meant to imply that the dealers were black. Then he said, “half the time they impregnate a young white girl before they leave.”

The word “white,” as clear evidence LePage was stereotyping the invading dealers as non-white, became the issue.

In response, LePage gave a long speech, addressed to and attacking the media. He invoked Rocky Balboa, saying, “In one of the movies of Rocky… I’ll just sort of paraphrase it [adopts some kind of accent] ‘Youse don’t like me and I don’t like you.’ I mean that sincerely.” [Translation: I am a noble underdog! Destined for greatness! Report that if you dare!]

He griped that he had talked for an hour and fifteen minutes about problems in Maine. “That whole time I made one slip-up. I made a one word slip-up…. I may have made many slip-ups. I was going impromptu, and my brain didn’t catch up to my mouth. Instead of saying ‘Maine women’ I said ‘white women.’ And I’m not going to apologize to the Maine women for that, because if you go to Maine, you’ll see we are essentially 95 percent white.” Then he rants at the media for reporting slip-ups and not on what he has to say about problems in Maine.

Notice how he sets up the dishonest notion that people/the media want him to apologize for saying Maine women are (mostly) white, which he will bravely refuse to do.

Later, he said:

If I slipped up and used the wrong word, then I apologize to all the Maine women.

Just awful. Not only is it a dreaded Sorry If, it’s deliberately beside the point. No one wants him to apologize for saying most women in Maine are white. They want him to apologize for trying to stir up racism by presenting the heroin problem in Maine as being a result of black male drug dealers preying on white people.

Slate says most drug traffickers in Maine are white, furnishing a sample link to mugshots of three white people charged with heroin dealing. They are state residents with sinister names like James, Jody, and Donna. Facts? Don’t smear facts on the brave underdog, media jackals!

It doesn’t matter what race a drug dealer is. It’s not nicer when white people sell heroin. It doesn’t matter whether a dealer is called D-Money, or Gavin, or Emily. The only reason to invoke race is to tap into racism. That’s LePage. By the way, it’s no good calling him an old white man. He’d still be repugnant if he was a young brown woman saying these things.

LePage, whom Politico called “America’s craziest governor,” hates to apologize. When he does apologize, he uses it to make things even uglier. And then he goes off on the media.

In 2015 LePage gave a radio address arguing that Maine should get rid of its state income tax so people wouldn’t leave to avoid paying. “[F]ormer Governor Ken Curtis lives in Florida where there is zero income tax. Stephen King and Roxanne Quimby have moved away, as well.”

King immediately said he has not moved away from Bangor, Maine. (He spends time in Florida in winter.) He votes in Maine. He pays taxes in Maine, on the order of $1.4 million a year. King tweeted, “Governor Paul LePage implied that I don’t pay my taxes. I do. Every cent. I think he needs to man up and apologize.”

The next week LePage crashed a budget forum in Cumberland. A citizen asked if LePage would apologize to King. Naah. “I never said that, sir, so I’m not going to apologize. I never said Stephen King did not pay income taxes. What I said was, Stephen King’s not in Maine right now. That’s what I said. How the papers report it, I don’t know.” (See who’s to blame?)

King told the Portland Press-Herald “He still owes me an apology, but I don’t expect to collect on that IOU. I repeat: he’s not man enough to admit he made a mistake (best case scenario) or knowingly misrepresented the facts (worst case).”

LePage didn’t do much better in 2012 when he angered people by comparing the IRS to the Gestapo.

The acts of the Holocaust were nothing short of horrific. Millions of innocent people were murdered and I apologize for my insensitivity to the word and the offense some took to my comparison of the IRS and the Gestapo.

See how he gets it in there that some people weren’t offended? Then he harped on his original point. “It was never my intent to insult or to be hurtful to anyone, but rather express what can happen by overreaching government. I fear we have a federal government that is moving toward a socialistic state, and we must not forget history because, if we do, we are bound to repeat it.”

And it was just one slip-up! “[O]ne word halted the conversation and spurred a flurry of unintended consequences.”

In 2013 LePage declared “Obama hates white people.” That remark caused controversy, because it’s ridiculous and vicious. First he denied saying it, then apologized. Is it better because he apologized? No, worse – he apologized only to Republicans.

My fellow Republicans, I write to you to apologize for any difficulty that remarks recently reported in the press may have caused you…. Let me be clear, I do not believe that President Obama dislikes any racial group.

He apologized to his team for making them look bad. He didn’t apologize to, for example, President Obama.

On to the media oppressors! “Newspapers owned by politically motivated and powerful elitists relentlessly attack my every word and often mischaracterize my comments.”

Chris Christie has described LePage as a man who “wears his heart on his sleeve.” I asked Maine resident and taxpayer Sarah Swan how to pronounce his name, and she said “LePage? [luh PAGE?] The asshole that should be impeached?” I’d say Swan’s description is more accurate than Christie’s.