Blogger Caleb Howe Apologizes for Mocking Roger Ebert's Cancer

(May 13) -- A right-wing blogger who mocked the suffering of cancer-afflicted film critic Roger Ebert has apologized, blaming political partisanship, the vitriolic atmosphere of Twitter and excessive consumption of vodka.

Caleb Howe, a blogger at RedState.com, became embroiled in a war of tweets after Ebert compared wearing an American flag on May 5, celebrated worldwide as Cinco de Mayo, to wearing a hammer and sickle on July 4. Howe then asked:

You know, @ebertchicago, I'm not as expert on flag etiquette as you. Tell me, which do I fly when you die of cancer?

Now Howe says he is sorry. In a new blog post on Mediaite.com, he says he gained a new appreciation for Ebert as a person while trawling Ebert's previous tweets for argument fodder. The blogger also acknowledged that Twitter has become an echo chamber for political vitriol.

"It's a polarized country we live in," Howe wrote on his blog. "Contempt is the one thing you will see on display more often than any other emotion in political tweeting."

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Caleb Howe in Denver on the first day of the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

Howe first realized that he might share something with Ebert when he found himself agreeing with the critic's review of the movie "Kick-Ass." From there, Howe learned to appreciate Ebert's Twitter style -- the "lyrical turns of phrase" and the way he handles criticism.

"It was like he was ... human," Howe wrote. "I kept thinking, 'I should like this guy.'"

Ebert suffers from thyroid cancer, which has disfigured his face and taken his voice. Howe had earlier mocked Ebert, saying he didn't "have the balls or the jaw" to answer criticism, and asking how many body parts Ebert had to lose "before he gets the hint to shut the [expletive] up." These tweets were, by Howe's own admission, often fueled by alcohol.

Ebert responded by tweeting, "You want ugly? For that you have to look at a mind, not a face."

In the new blog post, Howe says the compressed nature of Twitter, with tweets limited to 140 characters, makes it impossible to judge the person posting the tweet, and all too easy to get lost in hatred.

"Roger Ebert cannot be measured by his Twitter feed," Howe wrote. "He is human, and what's more a human in pain."

Howe disavowed the "race to the bottom" but warned that his tweeting would still have a hard edge.

"Vodka cometh," Howe wrote.