Barack Obama conceded his remarks were ill chosen after his attempts to restate his remarks failed. Fortunately, for Obama, unlike the “typical white person” remark, his current controversial remarks are too lengthy to fit on a T-shirt.

UPDATE: But a new slogan has arisen, pithy enough for a T-shirt: “I’m not bitter.”

Here’s what got him into trouble originally:

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

UPDATE: Politico has uncovered video from the San Francisco event, of Obama’s words that precede the “bitter” remark. Politico also links to some photographs of the event.

Here is the video of his appearance in Indiana on April 11, in which he made the attempt to restate the original remarks.

As AP reports, Obama has admitted that the remarks were ill chosen..

After a full throated response to criticism that he is condescending, Democrat Barack Obama on Saturday conceded that comments he made about bitter working class voters who “cling to guns or religion” were ill chosen.

“I didn’t say it as well as I should have,” he said.

As Obama tried to quell the furor, presidential rival Hillary Rodham Clinton hit him with one of her lengthiest and most pointed criticisms to date. (More.)

The article goes on to discuss Hillary Clinton’s hard-hitting criticism of Obama’s remarks and their implications. The New York Times also examines what it calls the Obama campaign’s attempt to limit fallout over the remarks. The Times surveys reactions in Pennsylvania.

Gov. Edward G. Rendell, Mrs. Clinton’s most prominent supporter in Pennsylvania, said Mr. Obama should not have implied that rural voters were clinging to their guns as a way of dealing with their frustrations.

“People in rural Pennsylvania don’t turn to guns and religion as an escape,” Mr. Rendell said. “Hunting and sportsmanship are long-established traditions here, and people of faith founded the commonwealth and continue to live here. What the senator has done is essentially misread what is actually happening in Pennsylvania.”

But J. Richard Gray, the mayor of Lancaster and an Obama supporter, said that this is not what Mr. Obama meant. In his view, Mr. Obama was trying to say that Republicans take emotional matters like guns and religion and try to use them to divide people.

“I don’t think he’s demeaning religion or guns,” Mr. Gray said. “He’s saying the use of those issues as wedge issues plays on the bitterness that people have and diverts attention from the real economic issues, like the disparity between the wage earner and the rich.”

The Jed Report has put together a montage of Hillary Clinton’s response to Obama’s remarks and Obama’s attempt to respin them. While we doubt that multi-millionaire Hillary Clinton is truly down with the people, she does have the better hand as she evokes the American spirit of optimism while Obama tries to put a prettier face on bitterness and disappointment.