The trend: "Sorry, will an apology do?"

HAVE YOU NOTICED how many remorseful individuals are offering apologies these days before going quietly to their rooms? The latest to be reported came from Gregg Steinhafel, the chairman, CEO and president of Target. Addressing the swift reaction from pro-gay rights activists to his company's contribution of $150,000 to an outfit that supports the anti-gay marriage gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota, Steinhafel apologized to gays and lesbians for a company decision that "affected many of you in a way I did not anticipate, and for that I am genuinely sorry." (Doesn't a big retailer like Target have a PR person on staff to anticipate what the boss said he didn't anticipate?

Meantime, Irvin Good Jr., the owner of Goodtime Amusements, apologized for a "shooter game" at a carnival in Pennsylvania, in which the target was unmistakably President Obama. Good said it wasn't Barack, shut it down anyway and...apologized.

That NAACP, Obama, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and Bill O"Reilly all apologized to Shirley Sherrod - after she was fired.

Rep. Joe Barton of Texas apologized to BP for what he considered to be a shakedown by the Feds.

Overseas, Pope Benedict apologized to the Irish families who were victims of sex abuse by priests.

Tony Blair apologized for the Irish potato famine.

Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian big-shot, apologized to Jews for saying that Mussolini never killed anyone. He also demanded an apology from his wife Veronica for telling newspapers that she wanted a divorce. Sorry, Silvio. No chance of that.

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Outrage: It's all the rage in America today

OUTRAGE HAS become a defining moment in the nation's psyche, not only from the Tea Partyers, but also from a lot of other people who cannot sit still on a hot summer evening and get a therapeutic laugh from Seinfeld. ( You might already see the extent of my TV diversions.). So where to begin to make my case?

Thanks to the fact that we have an African-American president, slavery is making it back in the hot discussion of America's values. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, full of rage, lashed Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert for morphing LeBron James into a "runaway slave" - which was kind of shocking inasmuch as runaway slaves never left town as a zillionaire with expectations of starring on a NBA championship team. Gilbert, of course, had lit the fuse with a clinically isolated example of searing outrage aimed at Mr. James - who lived through the experience without a single hint of anger about his new digs.

It reached a point in that exchange of outrage that some others took umbrage that Zydrunas Ilgouskas, the Cavaliers Eiffel Tower center (and equally immobile) did not produce the same outrage from the fans when he joined his itinerant teammate in Miami. Once again, the connective tissue was outrage, which never seems to tire sports fans.

And wouldn't you know that Rep. Michele Bachmann, the loony Republican from Minnesota, again expressed her outrage that President Obama was, in her words, channeling us into a "nation of slaves." Some Republicans are outraged daily by Michael Steele, the party's national chairman. The latest outburst was produced by Steele's accusation that Afghanistan was first conceived by Obama. My only conclusion is that the GOP hawks do not want to be denied the honor of calling it their war.

The NAACP slammed the Tea Partyers with a resolution charging them with racism - a charge that was heatedly denied by the TP upper classmen who have yet to explain why there are so many racist placards at some of their outings.

Glenn Beck, who markets outrage between commercials, is doubtless at sixes and sevens now that surveys have shown that he has lost half of his audience. Rep. Joe Barton, the Texas Republican, was outraged by the Administration's demand that BP set up a fund to pay off people stricken by the oil spill. He meekly apologized to BP, calling Obama's effort a $20 billion "shakedown."

It looks like NASA's prediction that 2010 will be the hottest on record will be realized - not all of it by global warming.

A call for Republicans to slit their wrists

THE REPUBLICAN opponents of a health care reform seem to have taken their cues from a Class D minor league pitcher in firing wild pitches: curve balls aimed at the electorate, stray sinkers in the dirt, fast balls at the chin of Barack Obama, knock-down sliders that force the umps to warn of ejections.

It is disgraceful behavior by a group that calls itself a national political party without apology.

And it has only gotten worse in the past several days as that segment of the GOP that was once the home of the the fringe has now spread to the party's "leaders" who washed out of the mainstream of political discourse. Some samples, if you are sitting down:

• The Republican National Committee circulated a fund-raising letter that claimed an Obama style medical care reform would deny Republicans access to coverage! Here is a direct quote from the letter:

"It has been suggested that the government could use voter registration to determine a person's political affiliation, prompting fears that GOP voters might be discriminated against for medical treatment in a Democrat-imposed health care rationing system. Does this possibility concern you.?"

What concerns me is that the RNC employs people who can come up with that sort of crap. And by the way, who, in your words, suggested it?

OK, so after it placed such idiocy before its jury, it stepped back from it, with an RNC operative saying the letter was "inartfully worded" while denying it was intended to scare people. But it obviously was quietly pleased that the message made it to a friendly jury before it was stricken from the record.

• Michele Bachmann, the Republican c0ngresswoman from Minnesota , again rose from the ashes of her many earlier self-immolating utterances to explain the intensity of her opposition to reform. This one has taken her to new heights as the party's uncontested ding-a-ling:

"This [health care reform] cannot pass...What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn't pass" .

Covenant? Michele, be sane for once in your life. If you slit your wrists there's no way you can reach the summit of Mt. Sinai alive.

• Finally, credit Rep. Joe Barton, Republican, Texas (what is it about Texas!) with counting his chickens before they cross a heavily traveled road. Barton believes Democrats will lose the House in 2010, allowing him to return to his former role as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. And if health reform becomes law, he says, Repubicans will simply repeal it with him in the driver's seat.

Joe has yet to say whether he will join Michele up to the top of Mt. Sinai.

This is an incredible chapter in the life of a desperate political party. And a promise: I'll stop nailing it when its soldiers stop acting like infantile soldiers.