Questlove, the one-named bandleader on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,” yesterday apologized — sort of — for the Michele Bachmann incident.
“Blocking 3,500 Tea Party extremists [on Twitter] in a three-day period is no fun,” he said in his first interview since he set off a political firestorm for playing a song called “Lyin’ Ass Bitch” as entrance music when Bachmann appeared on Fallon’s show last week.
“In the end, was it worth it? Absolutely not,” he told the music Web site Pitchfork.
“It wasn’t like a chess move where you have to think 12 steps ahead; you’re just, like, ‘F–k, all right, I’m gonna do it,’ in a kamikaze-type way. And I really didn’t think about how it could be perceived as a misogynist swipe.
“I forgot ‘bitch’ is actually in the title,” he said.
“It deeply offended a lot of women’s groups and non-Bachmann supporters, and for that I’m deeply sorry.
“I was really just going with her whole revisionist history angle. I wasn’t calling it out on her being a woman.”
NBC said last week that Questlove’s band, the Roots, had been “severely reprimanded” for the incident.
Fallon and the network’s exec in charge of late night had already apologized over the band’s choice of music.