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MSNBC's Chris Hayes apologized once again on Saturday for saying that he felt "uncomfortable" calling killed soldiers "heroes."
Hayes unleashed a furious backlash last Sunday for the comments. (Many also came to his defense.) He was explaining why he worried that the term could be used to justify potentially unjust war policy. Hayes apologized on Monday, saying that he was "deeply sorry" for the statements.
On his next show, Hayes started off by flashing various headlines about the controversy, saying that he had "cringed" when he saw them. He recounted some of the responses he had received, and said that he agreed with the anger in them.
"Who was I to say who is and isn't a hero?" he said. "It hardly seems like it's a designation that is mine to deny or even to confer."
Then, with the emotion in his voice clear, Hayes tried to explain further what he had been getting at:
We have a society that on the one hand has become comfortable with war and on the other hand wants to distance itself from it as much as possible, to outsource it to contractors, to robots and to the 2.3 million volunteer men and women who have been asked to serve for longer durations than at any time in recent history. Our political culture sometimes seems engineered entirely to make us hate each other. What we're trying to do here on this show, and obviously we don't always succeed, is to talk about sometimes quite sensitive topics in good faith ... we tried to do that last week, but I felt short in a crucial moment.
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