Arianna Huffington and Harry Shearer

Bit naive there, AH, decrying the less-than-human quality of a man named Stone. Fair warning, I'd say. Leave that Stone unturned. I've been reading the Australian papers, and there's a big flap down there about National Sorry Day. This is an eerie echo of the controversy over Bill Clinton's apology for slavery. Now, to celebrate the first anniversary of the release of a report detailing a "well-meaning" national policy that took hundreds of thousands of Aborigine children from their parents in this very half-century, lots of Australians signed "sorry books." But the prime minister refused to apologize. There is something goofy about all this after-the-fact pain-feeling, something so late that it can do nothing except assuage white liberal guilt. But the pomposity of refusing even to say a simple "sorry" is even goofier. I think it reflects a deep sense that, despite evidence to the contrary, we and our brothers down under nurture a self-image that doesn't allow for the possibility of evil. So we don't have culturally sensible rituals to deal with it, to atone for it. Which leaves us with staged "race dialogues" and "sorry books" no one will ever read. Much like my book.

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