Monday, November 06, 2006

Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word

It's a rainy Monday here in Space City. Sipping Starbuck's Verona, Bold, and deciding when to make a dash for the drugstore to pick up my blood pressure med refill. I'll be needing that stuff tomorrow. Chicken and dumplings in the crockpot, simmering away, and Max has given up on his quest to chase squirrels today. He doesn't like rain delays in his favorite sport.

Much to the dinosaur media's disappointment, the people of Iraq are accepting the guilty verdict of Saddam, even the Sunni's so far. The folks in Tikrit have voiced irritation but that's Saddam's hometown so it's to be expected. Their days of the gravy train are over.

Why is it so diffucult for those personalities in the spotlight to owe up to mistakes and just say "I'm sorry"? Media furors would be much less frequent and easily managed if only the person would get out front of a controversy and apologize.

The person could say, "I'm sorry, I made a mistake" or "I'm sorry, I used poor judgement", or more honestly, "oops, you caught me, I'm sorry". The general public would accept any of these statements and move on without any brouhaha. Everyone makes mistakes.

The latest examples, last week's slamming of the military by John Kerry and then the University of Penn president are two glaring examples. We are tired of the Kerry kerfuffle. The President of the Univ of Penn is a foolish woman. She was caught having a photo taken with a student dressed as a suicide bomber at the university's undergrad Halloween party. She poses with the students throughout the party. She posed with a Syrian student dressed as a suicide bomber without any question. She says she voiced surprise that he got through security. She says she wasn't paying close attention to the costumes of the students. The student promptly posted the photo on his website, a site that glorifies violence and killing execution style that we see in the Middle East, like beheadings, and then the photo made the wires. He says she was laughing it up with him and didn't have a problem with his costume.

So, she comes out with the statement that she apologizes if she has offended anyone. Again, the poorest form of apology. This is the non-apology apology. When the guilty person says the incident has been misinterpreted, or that the person is surprised anyone is offended, then this blames the victim. How silly of you to be offended. If you were smart, you would have interpreted the whole thing differently.

Be a grown up already.

I see in the newspaper that Chelsea Clinton has taken a new job at a Hedge Fund firm. Her previous job was as a consultant for a Wall Street firm at a base salary in the 6 figures.

The Bush twins are taking a different career path. Jenna is teaching this year in South America and Barbara is continuing on with her health care work in Africa. She concentrates on the AIDS programs being established by her father's pen in the Oval Office.

1 comment:

srp said...

Where were the six figure salaries when WE graduated college. I guess medicine was the wrong field to go into.... didn't start at six figures, when it finally got to that hurdle the IRS took almost half and then malpractice started taking the rest.

Oh yes, I forgot.... my last name isn't Clinton.

The consolation that I learn as I get older and older and older is.... everyone will die eventually and I know for sure that you cannot take it with you. So I need less and less and actually want less and less.

Right now, that is a very good thing, since I still haven't found a position yet. I might have to start looking in the west. I will still hold out and try not to go back to Texas.... too close to the ex.... All my ex's really do live in Texas.