Just wanna take a moment to point out how sick I am of “I wish he wouldn’t do/say that, BUT …”

News lately is lousy with this phrase. I guess it’s probably always been lousy with this phrase, but more so since You-Know-Who has sat the highest seat in the land. Every day he does something that needs apologizing for. And since he will never apologize for himself (you have to feel bad about a thing to apologize for it), every day his apologists swarm forth to deliver said apologies in his stead. Kind of.

Let’s be real, though. We all went to grade school. We all know that when you apologize with a “but” on the end, it’s not really an apology, you’re claiming justification. You’re admitting wrongdoing, but not really. “I wish he wouldn’t say s***holes, BUT (insert racist and/or patronizing remark here).” “I wish he wouldn’t say ‘grab ’em by the p****, BUT (insert sexist and/or derogatory remarks about an entire gender here).”

Sidenote: I’m fascinated and endlessly amused by the dances networks do to avoid repeating the foul language You-Know-Who uses. Listening to an interview when both parties keep saying, literally, s-holes, is so ludicrous it’s almost to be laughed at. “blank”holes is pretty good, too. Or you could go the CNN route, throw caution to the wind, and just use the actual language in question in front of millions of viewers round-the-clock. Seriously — what’s the right play? Censor the language of the highest office in the land or report on it honestly and be judged vulgar?

Then they proceed to evangelize about why, deep down, he’s really right to say what he’s saying, even if he isn’t saying it in “the nicest way”.

And, I mean, I get it. Everybody misspeaks. Thank goodness, after all, I don’t have people parsing my language every day. But, for goodness’s sake. There’s not a job in this country that you can keep when you’re so uncouth, so consistently uninformed, so routinely unaware of social graces.

Except, apparently, president. Apparently the president can say whatever he wants, and still be defended to the death by suit- and skirt-wearing sycophants.

And these are only the things we hear about!

Seems like the argument today is that he didn’t say “s***hole countries,” he said “s***house countries.” Because that’s so much better.

The problem isn’t even the language (though the language is its own problem). The problem is the thinking — or the lack of thinking — behind the language. Write off an entire country, an entire group of people, as a hole in the ground fit only for excrement? Sure, that seems reasonable.

Is he the Pied Piper? Is he a voodoo priest? How does he manage to convince so many otherwise intelligent people to make the stupidest arguments on his behalf? Why do so many otherwise respectable individuals keep destroying their credibility coming to his defense?

I don’t know if I will ever understand this.