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Romney Accepts Classy Apology With Equal Class

by Nuzha Nuseibeh

Sometimes, people can surprise you. On Sunday, in spite of (repeated) prodding from Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney responded to MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry's classy and emotional apology with equal class. "Look, I’ve made plenty of mistakes myself. They’ve apologized for this. You know, I think we can go on from there,” he said. Damn straight.

After showing Romney a clip of the controversial segment — in which Harris-Perry used a photo of Romney and his grandchildren, one of whom is black, as a setup for jokes about the GOP — Wallace asked: “Governor, this must be hurtful, and I know you are a classy guy and you don’t want to get into it, I got to ask you, honestly, from the heart, how did you, and quite frankly, how did Mrs. Romney feel when you heard your baby grandson Kieran was the target of political ridicule?”

To which Romney responded calmly: "I recognize people make mistakes. The folks at MSNBC made a big mistake. They apologized for it. That's all we can ask for. I'm going to move on from that. I'm sure they want to move on for that."

Harris-Perry made it clear that she felt awful about the segment yesterday on her show, during which she made an emotional on-air apology to the Romneys for her remarks. Herself part of a multi-racial family, she teared up as she said how sorry she was for suggesting that interracial families were in any way deserving of mockery. And, as a public figure, she's had to deal with some intense insults herself, so being on the (unintentional) firing side was probably a shock.

"I get a tonne of hate mail, both in my inbox and in my blog comments, and they even send it to me, like, they bother to put a stamp on it. And there is no doubt that it is painful, and sometimes scary," Harris-Perry said, during an interview with Feministing back in 2009. "You know, they’ll go right to the things that are most important: they’ll call me fat and stupid and say I’m a bad mom. Every woman worries about being fat and stupid and a bad mom. So I get how painful it is ... but this is part of it. This is part of the deal with public life."

This much was understood by Romney who, even after being pushed again by Wallace, said:"I think people recognize, and the folks at MSNBC who have apologized recognize, people like me are fair targets: If you get in the political game, you can expect incoming." But he added: "For children, that's beyond the line. I think they understand that and feel that as well. I think it's a heartfelt apology, and I think for that reason we hold no ill will whatsoever."

Watch the clip below, and then let bygones be bygones: