After being torched online for ascribing the success of American Sniper to a bunch of “angry” “Tea Partiers,” Democrat Howard Dean apologized Tuesday to any military veterans he might have insulted in his comments. But Dean made sure that the MSNBC audience understood that he was NOT apologizing to “right-wing nut-jobs.”
On HBO’s "Real Time with Bill Maher" this weekend, Dean said the success of Clint Eastwood’s film was simply a result of a “lot of anger in this country,” particularly on the Right:
Dean: There’s a lot of anger in this country, and the people who go see this movie are people who are very angry. This guy (the late Chris Kyle) basically says, "I’m going to fight on your side." I bet you if you looked at the cross-section of the tea party and people who see this movie there’s a lot of intersection.
Dean was roundly thumped for the comments, most notably by pro-military actor Gary Sinise, who took Dean to task for the deliberately dismissive assertion.
On MSNBC Tuesday, Dean officially apologized to vets, admitting he hadn’t even seen the movie when he made the comments, while simultaneously doubling down on his insult to conservatives:
Dean: I’ll apologize to the veterans. I haven’t seen the movie and I think I was wrong. I talked to a lot of people about it. I make no apologies to all the thousands of right-wing nut-jobs that have been twittering me in nasty language, but I do apologize to the veterans. We owe them a lot, and I think this movie was much more nuanced than I thought.
In its piece on Dean’s remarks, Gateway Pundit notes that the Kelly File proved that Dean was wrong in the first place about his assessment as to who was filling theater seats:
For the record Howard Dean is not only offensive, he is wrong. Deadline Hollywood reported, via The Kelly File, 43% of the American Sniper audience is women. And, 37% are under the age of 25.
Meanwhile, Clint Eastwood’s film is continuing its historic run at the box office—the film set to be the highest-grossing war film of all time—and effectively exposing "far-left nut-jobs" like Dean for the absurd caricatures they are.
H/T Gateway Pundit.
