"Hi, I'm corrupt Republican Tom Feeney..."

I was just sitting here having having a cup of coffee. Just reading the paper, next to some fruit, in a douchebaggy lavender open-collar dress shirt... Anyways I just wanted to tell you, the good people of FL-24, that I'm really sorry about that Abramoff thing. I didn't know what the deal was. Really.



Via Chris Cillizza, who writes:
Politicians, as a rule, don't like to apologize, and they certainly don't like to apologize in front of tens of thousands of viewers. And, there is recent evidence that a mea culpa by an endangered politician doesn't make things better...

Oh no, I'm sure "I embarrassed you" (he actually says this in the ad) is actually a stunningly effective bit of political messaging. But time will tell.

Update:
“Obviously, the ‘mea culpa’ ad is not a huge genre in American politics,” said Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project, a University of Wisconsin project that collects and codes political ads. “If someone has done something bad enough that they think they need to apologize for it with a television ad, they’ve usually decided not to run.”
via