Apologizing is seldom pleasant, but it is a useful skill to perfect. Apparently Hillary Rodham Clinton felt the need to apologize when she told an audience at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that young people today "think work is a four-letter word," something she must have cribbed out of the "Complete Compendium of Wormy Clichés" as filler. The comment, trite as it is, would have escaped detection had it not been for Hillary's all-grow'd-up daughter Chelsea, fresh from following her perhaps imaginary exploits in the tabloids, who called Senator Mom and announced that she was insulted by the insinuation. "She called and she said, 'Mom, I do work hard and my friends work hard,'" Clinton said. So she apologized…to Chelsea. And told a graduating class at Long Island University that she apologized to Chelsea, apparently using Chelsea as a symbolic stand-in for the youth of America.

It doesn't work that way. For one thing, Chelsea is hardly an average 20-something. She's a jet-setter, has a Masters Degree, and belongs to a high-profile family that makes sloth on her part out of the question. Second, there's little stress in apologizing to one's daughter, compared to apologizing to a whole segment of the population. Finally, and this is Clintonism to the core, Hillary's use of her apology to Chelsea is typically and perhaps deliberately ambiguous. Was her relating the story of Chelsea's objection supposed to be an apology to all? Or was her apology to Chelsea simply an acknowledgement that while most of the Americans her age might be lazy slugs, the former First Daughter and her pals were different?

Who knows? The Scoreboard's conclusion is that Hillary Clinton needs some refinement of her apologizing skills, which we didn't know, and her candor, which we did. If she really believed that she impugned young Americans unfairly, she should apologize to the group, not just her daughter and her friends. If she doesn't think her comment was untrue or unfair, then she should have the courage to stand by it, not slyly imply a general apology she never made by relating one she made to a specific individual.

If the latter was her intent, the Associated Press cooperated by headlining the story of Hillary's exchange with Chelsea as "Sen. Clinton Apologizes for Work Remarks," a misleading and deceitful description that would lead a reader to believe that Clinton issued a general apology. But if a general apology is what Senator Clinton believes her remarks warranted, the youth of America is still waiting.

[The Scoreboard thanks reader Jeff Hibbard for bringing this story to its attention.]

Post Script: The Wall Street Journal's blogger James Taranto, no fool he, has pointed out that work IS a four letter word. So Hillary had nothing to apologize for after all!