It's one thing to say, "I'm sorry." It's another to mean it.
Saying you’re sorry these days is like saying, “That’s neither here nor there.”
Sounds good.
But it pretty much means nothing.
It’s protocol.
You mess up. The media finds footage of it. You offer up an apology in the hopes that what you hold dear is not yanked away from you like a gigantic, ubersticky band-aid. You and victim move forward.
For, tomorrow’s another day!
Modern day apologies always seem to carry a stated or implied “If.” If you’re going to take my job away from me, then I guess I’m sorry. If I’m not going to make the millions I’m accustomed to bragging about in my songs, then I’m just gonna have to be sorry . . . for a day.
“If I hurt you . . . then I’m sorry.”
If the public is going to think I’m a racist (which I am), then I’ll just have to take a knee (with the cameras rolling) and say, “I’m sorry.”
"Boo, I thought you knew. I don't do favors. But do me one. Tell it to the next judge."
As a superior blog which looks down its self-righteous nose at American pop culture and hypocrisy, Blackbiter.com asks: Is there anything worse than a liar and a hypocrite?
No. Probably not.
"Zip it!"
Was Kobe Bryant sorry for playing house in a hotel with a gangly girl who was not his wife? Was President Clinton sorry for hooking up and hanging himself from Monica Lewinsky’s lips? Was 200-pound NFL Football player Ray Rice sorry for punching his baby mama’s lights out in an elevator? Was the Congressman sorry for playing “Show Me Yours and I’ll Show You My Weiner” on the Internet?
"Do I look stupid to you?"
When the Obama girls appeared “bored and ungrateful” at the Annual Turkey Pardoning Ceremony last year, Elizabeth Lauten, former communications director for U.S. Rep. Stephen Fincher, licked her chops and gave the First Daughters a good tongue-lashing. Did you believe she was sorry when she basically called the Obama girls poorly-dressed tramps with losers for parents? Thankfully, this turkey did not get pardoned.
After angrily getting all up in an Uber driver’s face, NYPD Patrick Cherry was demoted. Stripped of badge and gun and transferred out of the FBI’s elite Joint Terrorism Task Force, the detective issued a swift apology.
"What make you think that lie gon fly with me? I'm from these streets."
“People shouldn’t be treated that way. I let my emotions get the better of me and I was angry,” Cherry said.
However, with images of Sanjay Seth’s video seared to the public retina thanks to a camera perched in the peaceful eye of the storm while hate and anger and spit flew and rained down on a person for merely honking his horn, do you believe Cherry is sorry?
Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, who admonished the detective after the video went viral online, said, “No good cop can watch that without a wince.” The NYPD and independent Civilian Complaint Review Board are investigating “the exchange.”
“My intention was to be courteous and then we got into an argument. There was no intention to berate or hurt deeply the driver.” –NYPD Patrick Cherry
"In the Court of Public Opinion, I find you guilty of issuing an insincere apology."
Cherry says, “We got into an argument.” What he meant was, “If you saw me screaming and foaming at the mouth, then you know the Uber driver must have started an argument because obviously if I lost all self control, then it had to be the Uber driver’s fault, especially since he’s not even American—and you know how they are—and has not been in the states as long as I have.”
If Patrick Cherry’s statement were an Excel formula, the result would be “null” for the presence of a sincere apology.
Squirm a little, dodge a little, cross your fingers, blame someone else. Ugly Americans are not sorry for their actions. Embarrassed maybe . . . but never sorry. Morally wrong and unrepentant—to borrow a line from Rihannna—they’re just sorry they got caught.
