Neil Gaiman isn't impressed by Matt Dean's half-assed apology

Neil Gaiman likes Matt Dean's mom, but isn't too keen on her son.

​If a powerful politician you'd never met took to the press to call you a "pencil-necked little weasel" and falsely accuse you of stealing thousands of dollars from the state, you might reasonably expect a sincere apology.

And after the media storm that followed his inexplicable name-calling, today Matt Dean was forced by his mom to apologize to Neil Gaiman. Albeit reluctantly and in the most half-assed manner possible.

Now Gaiman has reacted to that apology, and proven once again why it was fool-hardy for the dim-witted legislator to get into an insult-writing contest with a brilliant, nationally award-winning author.

Gaiman, who expressed his mystification at being blind-sided in an interview with City Pages, today took to his blog to react to Dean's lame quasi-apology:

So, according to the City Pages Matt Dean has sort of apologised. Not in the way that grown-ups do, where you say you did something wrong and you know it.​

He's apologised for calling me names, he says, because his mother made him. (He doesn't seem to have apologised for calling me a thief.) He also says that, as a rich person, I should also do some charity work, which sort of dropped my jaw.

At this point, I'm just glad his mother (of whom, I must say, I am now a fan) didn't bring him round to my house with a hand on his collar and make him apologise in front of my whole family, while clearing her throat and giving him meaningful glances the whole time.

Has Dean smartened up and learned the folly of his ways? Or will he return to the Gaiman woodshed for another verbal brow-beating from his intellectual superior? Stay tuned.

Previous Coverage:

• House Majority Leader Matt Dean does not like Neil Gaiman
• Neil Gaiman responds to "pencil-necked weasel" insult by Matt Dean [INTERVIEW]
• Matt Dean sort of apologizes to Neil Gaiman because his mom made him