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EM 18: How Celebrities Say Sorry
A parade of public figures has recently apologized. What did we hear? Not a simple “I’m sorry”, was it?
Sorry is perhaps the hardest word for a celebrity - major or minor. Comedian Michael Richards, OJ Simpson publisher Judith Regan, Prime Minister Tony Blair and radio personality Rush Limbaugh all lately found out just how hard.
Welcome to the strange world of the celebrity apology.
The famous, the wealthy and the powerful who happen to be caught in some error come to face the public with a lot at stake. After a career building up an image or an empire, it can be next to impossible to humble yourself, accept the blame, and put your future in someone else’s hands.
How do celebrities manage their public apologies? And are these truly apologies at all?
When high-profile people find themselves in a public crisis their thoughts naturally turn toward reputation, career or financial liability.
Maybe that’s why radio personality Rush Limbaugh said recently, “I will bigly, hugely admit that I was wrong, and I will apologize to Michael J. Fox, if I am wrong in characterizing his behavior on this commercial as an act.”
The key word here is “if”, which neatly twists an apology into a statement of doubt and suspicion.
Maybe the same reason motivated publisher Judith Regan to give a 2,200-word justification rather than apologize. Her multi-million dollar book deal on how O.J. Simpson would have murdered his ex-wife and her friend disgusted much of the public.
Regan’s statement wandered deep into her own marital difficulties and included at its core this: “I made the decision to publish this book, and to sit face to face with the killer, because I wanted him, and the men who broke my heart and your hearts, to tell the truth, to confess their sins, to do penance and to amend their lives. Amen.”
The key phrase here is “I wanted”, and the twist casts a high-stakes executive publisher as a courageous detective-confessor heroine motivated by her own grievances to righteous combat.
Then there’s Michael Richards, the on-stage comedian whose shouting match at a group of hecklers suddenly turned into a racial tongue-lashing. Afterwards he too didn’t stop at a simple apology.
Rather he went on to hire a firm specializing in “rapid response” “work ’round-the-clock” against anything that “can inflict long-term damage in a very short time on” “an individual’s character”. Apparently his own televised contrition wasn’t enough, so he turned to these apology advisors, the kind who can cost over $400 an hour.
[Thanks for taking this article from EnglishMojo.com.]
The full scope of what Richards’ hired PR guns will have him do has yet to be seen.
Judith Regan’s boss is media titan Rupert Murdoch. He at least has added an actual apology to her vignette by saying in his own peculiar grammar: “I and senior management agree with the American public that this was an ill-considered project. We are very sorry for any pain that this has caused the families “.
As for Rush Limbaugh, his reverse-spin comments were still generating a media buzz three weeks later.
Still, celebrities can occasionally surprise us with a simple apology done right. Hugh Grant was arrested in a car with prostitute. In his first television interview after the incident he said, “I think you know in life, pretty much, what the good thing to do is and what a bad thing is. And I did a bad thing. And there you have it.”
But this is rare style among celebrities. Most can, and do, stretch the meaning of apology to their own ends. Yet no one has stretched the timing of apology more than British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who must be the King of Late Apologies.
He is expected to deliver a statement for the upcoming commemoration of outlawing of slavery in Britain 200 years ago. As drafted this reads in part: “we condemn its existence utterly and praise those who fought for its abolition - but also” “express our deep sorrow that it could ever have happened…”.
Blair had likewise previously apologized for the British government’s involvement in the Irish Potato Famine a century and a half before: “That one million people should have died in what was then part of the richest and most powerful nation in the world is something that still causes pain as we reflect on it today. Those who governed in London at the time failed their people.”
But the simplest overdue apology went to the Yanks. When picking up the US Congressional Gold Medal in 2003, he told Congress “… in 1814, the British had burnt the Congress Library. I know this is kind of late, but sorry.”