Samantha Bee on Ivanka: I'm sorry to women, and I'm sorry that people are ignoring the real issues

“I never intended it to hurt anyone,” she says of the C-bomb she dropped a week ago, but that’s not true. She intended to hurt Ivanka Trump. And Ivanka isn’t among the people who get an apology here, at least not specifically. Bee apologizes to women generally and to illegal immigrant kids for inadvertently spoiling her plea on their behalf with an ill-advised insult, both easy constituencies for an ardent progressive to pander to. Ivanka, the White House, Republicans — much harder. So, no, the Bad People don’t get any sorry even though they’re responsible for 95 percent of the criticism Bee got after last week’s show. Something to bear in mind as you sit through her plea for civility at the end of the clip.

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As with Colbert’s performance in interviewing Bill Clinton on Tuesday night, though, this is the best one could hope for under the political circumstances. It was a cinch that any mea culpa would be framed as regret for a wound to feminism, not as a wound to a human being’s feelings, but I thought Bee would roll her apology into an apologia about sexism, how POTUS sucks, how her political enemies momentarily got the best of her by their sheer evilness, blah blah blah. Her dropping the C-bomb on Donald Trump while apologizing to Ivanka wasn’t out of the question, I imagined. Contrition of any sort by a celeb, however qualified, is rare when a Trump is on the other side of the equation. But Bee is more or less straightforward here. There’s no Trump whining, no extended “focus on the real enemy” pleas to her detractors. Only Ted Cruz gets dinged, as a little reminder to lefties who might be grumpy with her over last week’s episode that they’re still all on the same team.

Best part here: When she blames her insult of Ivanka on her habit of trying to “reclaim” the epithet she used. The next time you wonder what the point is of having multiple cookie-cutter left-wing comedy hot take-rs on TV, there’s your answer — they’re destigmatizing the word “c*nt.” You’re welcome, America. Exit question: Is Bee’s show facing a quiet ad boycott? Newsbusters noticed that the number of national advertisers last night was way down from last week.

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