Oh, goody! I was hoping for something like this. As we discussed yesterday, Fox News issued a brief on-air apology for running video of Rep. John Conyers to accompany a story about the indictment of Rep. William Jefferson.

My take: Mistakes happen. Move on. It's the on-air equivalent of a typo.

UNLESS of course your stock-in-trade is viewing everything you can through the lens of racial conflict. AND you hate Fox News. AND you see Fox New's mistake as an excellent opportunity to both reinforce your "everything-is-about-race" world view and your strongly held belief that Fox News is neither fair nor balanced, despite their tag line.

Rep. Conyers does not disappoint us:

A top Democratic Congressman slammed Fox News for confusing him with an indicted colleague who is also African-American in a Monday afternoon broadcast. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) accused the network of having a 'complete disregard for accuracy."

"Fox News has a history of inappropriate on-air mistakes that are neither fair, nor balanced. This type of disrespect for people of color should no longer be tolerated. I am personally offended by the network's complete disregard for accuracy in reporting and lackluster on-air apology," said Rep. Conyers in a statement sent to RAW STORY. ("Conyers calls Fox News's apology 'lackluster,' condemns network for 'disregard for accuracy',"  The Raw Story)

As in the recent Apology Crisis in the Punjab! we see that demanding an apology or scorning an offered apology as inadequate can be a useful ploy in advancing one's social or political goals. Not to take sides here, but I seriously doubt the folks in the Fox News control room consciously said, "Hey, you know what would be hilarious? Running footage of John Conyers when we announce Rep. Jefferson's indictment?" I mean, maybe that's what happened, but I find it much more plausible that someone made a dumb mistake.

In normal polite discourse, a brief apology would suffice to reconcile the error. But we not live in a world or an era of polite discourse.  We live in a world of 24-hour no-holds-barred political and ideological conflict in which one's opponents are not merely wrong, but inherently evil and most likely the spawn of Satan.

Which is one reason why, as I noted, yesterday, I rarely watch cable news.

Fox News has, of course, made more than negligible contributions to creating this climate of permanent rhetorical Wrestlemania. So they can hardly complain when Rep. Conyers takes a posture of being highly offended at their mistake and summarily rejects their apology:

In the statement, Conyers' office also noted, "The network apologized on-air for airing the wrong video; however, they did not personally apologize to Mr. Conyers or describe the video they aired the previous day." (The Raw Story)

Conyers could have just let it go. He could have accepted the apology and moved on. Had, perhaps, CNN made this error — because every network makes mistakes like this from time to time — he might have done so.

Compare, for example, this incident from January: CNN apologizes for Obama gaffe in Bin Laden graphic (Raw Story) CNN made multiple on-air apologies for an erroneous graphic that accompanied a story about the hunt for Osama Bin Laden. Instead of "Where's Osama?" it read "Where's Obama?"

Sen. Barack Obama graciously accepted the apology:

In an interview with RAW STORY, Senator Obama's Press Secretary Tommy Vietor said he thought there was "no malicious intent" behind the graphic. "Wolf Blitzer is a good person and journalist. Someone made a mistake in a graphic, and that's as far as it goes," he said. (Raw Story)

Sen. Obama had nothing to gain from picking a fight with CNN. Had more conservative-leaning Fox News made that same mistake, he might have gotten some mileage out of being offended and rejecting their apology. (Or maybe not — Sen. Obama has a nice guy image, so maybe he would have accepted the apology from Fox too)

But the Jefferson/Conyers WAS Fox News, so here the unforced error (to use an obligatory baseball allusion) presents Rep. Conyers an opportunity to pick up a bat and take a few free whacks at Fox. (I realize that is not part of the rules of baseball.)

In the current media culture Conyers would be foolish not to take the free shot.