Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley apologized—sort of—for his Martin Luther King, Jr day speech, in which he appeared to embrace fellow evangelicals as “my brothers and my sisters,” but to exclude everybody else.
The Associated Press reports that Bentley met for an hour with members of Alabama’s Jewish community and afterward told reporters he meant no insult with his words.
“What I would like to do is apologize. Should anyone who heard those words and felt disenfranchised, I want to say, ‘I’m sorry.’ If you’re not a person who can say you are sorry, you’re not a very good leader,” Bentley said.
Bentley’s apology seems to have been agreeably received by local Jewish and Muslim leaders, but it would have been better had he regretted what he said rather than that some people “felt disenfranchised” upon hearing it.
Ethics Bob 