Already offered the cover of the "whitewashed" supplemental background investigation by the FBI, the last remaining Senate holdouts on Brett Kavanaugh's nomination—namely Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Republicans Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Jeff Flake of Arizona—were all given the additional opportunity to feel badly for the nominee on Thursday night when the Wall Street Journal was kind enough to offer him space on their editorial page for an op-ed in which he apologized for being "emotional" during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week and "said a few things I should not have said."

"When people show you who they are, believe them—even if they write an opinion piece claiming to be otherwise."

—Eddie S. Glaude Jr.

But while it remains to be seen if any of those senators—some of whom specifically expressed concern about the tone and content of Kavanaugh's prepared remarks and subsequent exchanges with committee members—will be moved by his quite obviously self-serving mea culpa on the eve of a procedural Senate vote scheduled for Friday morning, it was very clear indeed that critics across the internet were beyond unimpressed with the effort.

"Anyone who has to write [an op-ed titled "I Am an Independent, Impartial Judge"] on his own behalf is clearly not," remarked Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, right after the piece was published.

As further evidence, here are an additional ten tweets as a small but representative sample:

And finally: