Time's Halperin Apologizes For Saying Edwards "Thinks Obama Is Kind Of A Pussy"

Fishbowl DC reported this morning that Time's Mark Halperin "has a filthy, dirty mouth," quoting from his interview yesterday with Sirius Radio's Bill Geddie:

BILL GEDDIE: Haven't we heard all along that [John Edwards] doesn't like [Hillary Clinton], haven't we heard this?

MARK HALPERIN: Yes, that's right. And I can tell you, he's really skeptical of her ability to be the kind of president he wants. But, he kinda thinks Obama is..he thinks Obama is kind of a pussy.He has real questions about Obama's toughness, his readiness for the office.he has real doubts about Obama, not just as a president, but as a general election candidate.

This afternoon, Halperin issued a very vague apology on Time.com's The Page:

I'm sorry. In a live radio interview this week, I used a word I shouldn't have. The fact that I was conveying other people's words is no excuse for my lapse in judgment. It won't happen again. -- Mark Halperin

Comments

[Motherfunner]

This headline illustrates how misogyny trumps racism. How does a white man cast doubt on a black man? Call him a woman.

I think Hillary should offer to be veep to Obama. Her submission will earn her favor. She has to pay extra dues because she is a woman and a Clinton. She will show the country that she will put country first before her own ambition. She will earn respect. She and Bill can lend their expertise to Obama and we will have real problem solving and great healing for our nation. The nation will reward her, by making her the first woman president...in 2016. The sooner Hillary realizes this, the sooner the divisiveness can stop and the healing can begin. United we stand, divided we fall. The Republicans will be powerless. Obama/Clinton '08. Please Hillary, do it for our country.

[BrooklynLager]

Gibberish.

Pure, unadulterated gibberish.

[independentrepublicrat]

Although you are pro-Clinton, I am pro-Obama and I agree that the post is gibberish. If for no other reason than Clinton would ruin Obama's ticket and cost him the presidency.

[soupcity]

Submission? Nice.

[pithymaxim]

He's trying to psychologically and politically castrate Obama. Probably he is threatened by Obama, is upset that smart white women flock to him like antebellum Southern belles to mulatto mandingos. Halperin's statement reflects biologically challenged judgment or deep insecurity about his own penis.

[isis]

You say something mean, then you say "I'm sorry" but the mean thing is still out there. How childish. No wonder TIME has to send out its magazines for free to some customers in order to keep its circulation up.

[shades3]

I'm surprised that Halperin didn't preface his insulting characterization of Obama by saying, "I hope he won't take this the wrong way, but...."
When some people want to say something totally insulting, or make some tasteless observation, they quite often say that first to forstall any negative reaction from you.
Usually you, by saying that you won't be angry, or hurt have absolved them of responsibility for being a total ass for making the remark in the first place. What can you do? You've already said that whatever is about to be said is OK.
People, even sophistocated newspeople, make stupid comments and should actually be held to more responsibility for them than you and me.
Our stupid remarks aren't heard by millions of people.
Theirs are.

[Seafarer61]

The "Edwards ass kissing for the Obama endorsement train" has apparently stoped here at HuffPo.

My, how quick they turn on the guy.

[Seafarer61]

I'm missing a P above and it ain't Obama.

[musselmanm]

Five Surgeons from big cities are discussing who makes the best patients to operate on. The first surgeon, from New York, says, "I like to see accountants on my operating table because when you open them up, everything inside is numbered." The second, from Chicago, responds, "Yeah, but you should try electricians! Everything inside them is color coded. The third surgeon, from Dallas, says, "No, I really think Librarians are the best, everything inside them is in alphabetical order. The fourth surgeon, from Los Angeles chimes in: "You know, I like construction workers......those guys always understand when you have a few parts left over." But the fifth surgeon, from Washington DC, shut them all up when he observed: "You're all wrong. Politicians are the easiest to operate on.......there's no guts, no heart, no brains and no spine, and the head and the butt are interchangeable."

[myownwings]

LOL...thanks for a smile to start my day...

[Roose]

Funny and true. Thanks.

[truthiness]

Wow, there are a lot of stupid people (or bad skimmers) reading this blog. Edwards didn't call Obama a pussy. Halperin, reporter, journamalist, presstitute, whatever you want to call him, characterized Edwards perception of Obama as "kind of a pussy".

It was Halperin who used the offensive word for female genitalia to call Obama weak.

Edwards would never do such a thing.

Many of you are failing reading comprehension 101.

[Seafarer61]

weak = pussy in any political neighborhood. You can wordsmith it any way you desire if it makes you feel better.

[BrooklynLager]

If you want to call Obama a pussy than do it - don't put words in John Edwards' mouth. Prick.

[SeekerOne]

You missed a step in the equation: Pussy=female=weak.

Because the word has become so commonplace, most of us forget what it implies.

How ironic.

[truthiness]

You dope, in my neighborhood pussy is (1) female genitalia, or (2) a cat. Neither means weak; only if you think women are weak. If you think women are weak, go talk to your mother. She'll set you straight.

[cognitorex]

Truthiness. Well said.

[Triangulate]

Halperin said:

"The fact that I was conveying other people's words is no excuse for my lapse in judgment."

He appears to be quoting Edwards.

[SeekerOne]

How do we know? When anyone talks about Edwards endorsing, no one ever has a direct quotation, never offers a names. I'm betting Edwards is extremely upset with Halperin right now. And of course, it's absurd to think that Edwards himself, or even one of his surrogates, would use this language with a reporter.

[BokChoy]

Will you all stop it with the circular firing squad? There's no proof Edwards said anything of the sort. How would that douchebag Halperin know anyway?

[finally]

Exactly - let's look at the facts on record: given Mr. Edwards' own words about Mrs. Clinton just a few weeks ago, endorsing her would expose him as the ambulance chaser he is - will he get AG or sell out cheap for labor secretary? Do read what Sen. Feingold (not endirsing HRC nor BO)has been saying about Sen. Edwards: he campaigned AGAINST every single one of his own votes in the senate?!

[Myrna-Ann]

" Edwards voted to enable the Iraq invasion and Obama didn't."
Obama didn't, you didn't, and I didn't either. None of us were members of the US Senate at the time.
Obama spoke out against the Iraq invasion, but he did not vote on the record because he could not. And with respected figures such as Colin Powell urging senators to vote yes, nobody can say for sure how Obama would have voted if he had been in a position to do so.

[Alvin4NY]

Obama's the man standing outside the liquor store after it's been robbed, the report has been taken, and the police have left the scene. In other words, five years later. "Man, this ain't right....that clerk that was on duty was probably reading a magazine and just let that guy have the money...you know if the police would have been here five mintues earlier....that's right, that's right. This is messed up. (insert more useless gibberish here)"

[troutdrop]

Maybe my memory is a little fuzzy, as i remember it most of the country was ready to fight in iraq on the basis of all the intelligence on weapons of mass destuction and hussein's williness to use them we even had colin powell in front of the u.n. to make the case for war. If you want to know who is responsible for us to be in iraq just look in the mirror we all made a bad judgement just some of us want a scapegoat.don't think we wouldn't do it again given the same information.

[Waitaminute]

Not me. i knew it was BS from day one. We were amongst those labeled conspiracy theorist from the beginning. Let me tell you something else. The elections in 2000, 2002, 2004 were stolen. They tried to steal 2006. They cheated in almost every state.

[EgaliatrianPundit84]

I love it when people make that criticsm of Obama. Let's be clear, Obama's very public statement of opposition to the war in Iraq was more dangerous than a vote against the war in the senate. As a junior politician if he opposed what turned out to be a hugely popular war his political career would have ended before it began. What turns him from a naiive junior politician to a political wunderkind is his foresight in a time of extreme peril. Let's be clear.

[Alvin4NY]

, Obama's very public statement of opposition to the war in Iraq was more dangerous than a vote against the war in the senate.
__________________________________________

What was so "Dangerous" about it? He didn't have any authority, and was probably listened to as much as the people walking out of a movie theater following a Michael Moore movie.

[Candace8383]

hey news "media" shut up ok report but then SHUT UP you are wrong often stupid often and always annoying

[finally]

Exactly - report - and PRESS: where is the press, pressing Sen. Clinton on her refusal to open her financials until AFTER she gets the nomination?! Does she not think we deserve an informed choice?? And what about her claim that she is "vetted"? Obviously not; why else hide this until it may be too late, and we'd be talking about it with the GOP ad nauseam, again... Don't let the circus back in town....

[independentrepublicrat]

Hillary obviously promised him a high profile job so I hope he endorses her. I wouldn't want Obama taited with the endorsements of the weak-willed, fake corrupteds. Edwards has always been a selfish, opportunistic, attention-whoring charlatan.

As this week has shown, Obama doesn't need JohnE.come.lately.fair.weather.opportunists to win.

It is best for Edwards to accept the two middle fingers (loser 2004 & 2008) that Democrats have deservedly given him and disappear, but don't hold your breath waiting for this egomaniac to do anything that doesn't serve his power-tripping self-interests.

[Alvin4NY]

I wouldn't want Obama taited with the endorsements of the weak-willed, fake corrupteds. Edwards
_________________________________

Right. Not when you can have a lame duck like Kerry.

[ms.understood]

And anyway, he obviously needs his endorsement because he went to N.C. to court him! Obama and Edwards are two weaklings!

[Roose]

You mean the 'Breck Girl"?

[Alvin4NY]

You mean the 'Breck Girl"?
____________________________________

Yeah, that's like calling Barack the "G.Q. (Gay Quarterly) Boy"

[Groobiecat]

So I've been right all along--Obama is trying to elevate the level of discourse, others are trying to keep it at the puerile playground level with tired phrasing and the politics of soundbites.

My god! The man's effeminate because he's articulate! And smart! And he's trim! And, and he's attractive! He must be---GAY! Run away!!!!

What a bunch of chest-pounding bullshit.

[ms.understood]

Actually, he has the same people working for him that Bill Clinton had working for him while he was running and in office. What better way to beat the "enemy" than to become him? It's funny how he always touts wanting to increase the mpg on our future cars, then, while campaigning in Michigan, finds a way to speak about other issues and omits this fact. He's more of the same. You all can be fooled all you want by his evasive answers and smooth rhetoric, but if you truly listen to him and quit the infactuation about his race, you will find that he's just like the rest.

[Groobiecat]

It's "infatuation," and race has nothing to do with it. And your "facts" are actually wrong. In Michigan, he spoke about fuel economy to automakers *specifically*. In fact, he is fond of telling people on the stump that he went to Detroit to speak to the automakers about this very issue, not to some college campus, where he could get an easy crowd.

Ugh, it's fine if you don't want to vote for him, but at least have good reasons for it.

Oh, and the point about bringing Clinton people into his group is that, in fact, Clinton had some very smart people working for him. People like Bob Rubin and Robert Reich--he mentioned them specifically--because they're very very bright people.

Your logic is similar to this: Washington sucks. You visited Washington. Therefore you suck.

[ValuesVoter]

Edwards calling Obama a Pussy???? This lisp talking Bret Girl has got to be kidding me!!!! The dude flips his hair every two seconds and changes positions like a bored whore!

[sjl106]

ROFLMAO!! Obama is he whines and cries when people pick on him and Halprin was only repeating what he was told. Though Joe Wilson says it more diplomatically, he makes the same point.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-wilson/battletested_b_86355.html

[BrooklynLager]

Wait a minute - now Obama is the one crying?

I cannot keep up with this. The "latte drinking reaganite cult" blizzard of talking points was bad enough.

[apcalc]

Obama can be such a whiner.

[Groobiecat]

What the fuck are you people talking about? Whining? Crying? Really not smart people in this thread.

Christ, no wonder the the rest of the world thinks we're a bunch of superficial chest-pounding chimps, like Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld.

What, are you guys like, 12?

[WomanInOrangeSweater]

Looks like your screenname was penned by the Bush administration-- you know, the name says one thing and means the exact opposite.

[Lexie]

I don't believe Edwards said this; Edwards is too careful--why would he ruin the small but important leverage he has? I think Halperin is an idiot anyway; didn't he say Karl Rove and Matt Drudge were his world?

[Witchitalineman]

Who cares what these guys think!

[VivaZapata]

How pathetic! Nothing left but character assassination. fact is when Clinton got nasty during the debate, Obama gave back as good as he got. It was Edwards who got in the way of Obama really letting her have it. Politics really are slimy in the US, and maybe everywhere else, for all I know.

[rwferr]

Yea he gave it back as good as he got by playing the race card. By accusing President Clinton of being a racist of all things. When his back is up against the wall that is what he fell back on. Pathetic. Yet when Huckabee won Iowa and everyone said that it was just like when Pat Robertson won Iowa I did not hear anyone running around saying the other Republican candidates were anti-christian. It was just a fact.

[m4rk0]

Please provide a link where Obama called anyone a racist.

[Roose]

I recall Mark Penn accusing Obama of being a druggie and and a drug dealer, Robert Johnson, using the same drug analogy, Bill Clinton comparing him to Jesse Jackson because he won in SC, Andrew Young stating that "Bill Clinton had had more black women in his life than Obama", Andrew Cuomo's "Shucking and Jiving" quote.

So please explain to me again who introduced race to this campaign?

[prscnt1]

This asshole Halperin is repub acting like a dem. He has no interest in any dem winning the presidency.

If Edwards spoke like that, it is sad, and it is why he should have lost. It is time for him to take care of his wife. This also closes the door on Edwards to be vice president.

[rwferr]

Edwards knows Obama a lot better than all the people who think they know him cause they have heard his "hope and change" stump speech 25 times.

[prscnt1]

Edwards and Obama are politicians and it is simple: Edwards did not get what he wanted from Obama, so he is a pussy in Edwards mind. This may be horse-trade between the two, and Edwards is losing, if not has lost the game he was playing.

[BrooklynLager]

And you know this because?

Get back in your armchair.