Why ‘sorry’ doesn’t seem to be such a hard word anymore

We seem to be hell bent on contrition right now and it’s all becoming meaningless, writes Aingeala Flannery

THIS week’s buzzword is ‘sorry’. If nobody has apologised to you in the past seven days, you’ve surely missed an opportunity to be outraged. Never have so many people offended so many other people. You may be entitled to an unclaimed apology, or at least a bout of umbrage.

You might consider getting vexed about the Irish backpacker in Thailand, who was caught with his pants down — and an American exchange student in the penitent position before him. Both were forced by Thai police to make a public apology and beg for mercy and forgiveness in front of the media. Amateur phone footage of the act was broadcast on local TV.

I’m no fan of public lewdness, but the hypocrisy of this is undeniable — in a country whose GDP relies on sex tourism. When I went to Thailand I expected to see prostitutes, I did not expect to see young backpackers keeping teenage sex slaves in their beach huts — but I did see that, and like everybody else, I averted my eyes. So now, the vista of a red-faced young rake on the front page of the papers, shamed for making consensual, free love (albeit in public) – well the irony couldn’t but stick in your craw.

Next in line for absolution is cartoon hero-turned-heretic Fireman Sam. Indeed, all of fictional Pontypandy was really sorry last week — after it emerged that a page of the Koran appeared briefly in the popular kids’ show. In the offending scene, calamity-prone rockabil- ly fireman Elvis, whose main job is making the tea, slips on a sheet of paper. Under scrutiny the paper was identified as script from the Koran.

Several cast members were almost scalded in the incident, and a thousand people complained to the BBC. The BBC does not broadcast Fireman Sam. The production company behind the show apologised immediately, and unreservedly. It severed its contract with the animation studio that made the 2014 episode. As for the whistleblower who watches kids’ TV frame-by-tedious-frame, he couldn’t have picked a worse week to drop a K-bomb.

Unusually, the Fireman Sam apology has all the qualities of genuine remorse: it takes full responsibility, specifies what remedy has been taken, and promises not to repeat the offence.

Modern apologies tend to be more mealy-mouthed — none more so than the Latin mea culpa, favoured by aspirational idiots, who think education precludes you from ever having to admit you’re wrong. This is more annoying, but less common than the ‘I’m sorry if you were offended’ approach. Everybody knows this is a blatant attempt to shift the guilt from the offender to the offended. It’s worse than not apologising at all. There’s a word for it: nonapology.

The non-apology of the week, meanwhile, came from US baseball player Chris Sale after he slashed a load of vintage White Sox kits in a fit of pique. The team were supposed to wear the gear as a promotional gimmick, but Sale complained it would restrict movement and affect his game. His punishment was a five-day suspension — which he accepted with sporting grace: “Do I regret standing up for what I believe in? Absolutely not.”

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Cian Healy should take a leaf out of Sale’s book. The Leinster prop has form when it comes to regretoric. He’s still wearing sack cloth and ashes for offending singer Brian Kennedy by using the hashtag #backstothewall in a tweet about a Pride event in LA. Last week he reoffended by tweeting to Maser’s Repeal mural: “Ya ain’t alternative unless you’re in front of a blue wall these days”.

Healy pleaded ignorance about the significance of the Repeal mural. While he’d do well to think before he tweets, there’s an assumption by the blue wall brigade that everybody knows about the mural — they don’t. That said, the media coverage of Healy’s gaffe ensured the blue wall issue has reached thousands of people who would not otherwise have heard about it.

Why are we hell bent on wringing contrition out of each other? An endemic lack of accountability seems to have given us a ferocious appetite for apologies. We demand them at every turn, even from people who agree with us. Last week’s other apologists included: a woman in New Hampshire, ordered to write a letter of apology to her local paper after she was caught painting ‘Slow Down’ on a road accident black spot outside her home, and a gay man in Canada, who printed posters with the slogan ‘Lesbians Are Hot’ in a campaign to stop buying oil from countries where LGBT people are persecuted. His language offended the people he was trying to defend.

Meanwhile, the people who should apologise never do — unless it’s to save their own skins. Thus the Democratic Party had to scrape and bow before Bernie Sanders after WikiLeaks released emails proving his bid for the presidency had been scuppered by his own party. The apology — and the accompanying human sacrifice of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schulz — was politically expedient. If the Democrats implode, they hand the presidency to Trump. It’s an exercise in damage limitation, and the public know it.

We know politicians don’t say sorry. It is a sign of weakness. Never apologise, never explain. It’s the John Wayne school of public affairs. Beneath politicians on the champion’s podium of non-apology are bankers, corporations, the health service, the church, and now — even charities.

The great and the good will not be held to account and so we turn on each other, and resort to shaming cartoon firemen, naughty backpackers and sports stars.

Public outrage is a farce. “Sorry” is a redundant hashtag, a bowed-head emoji. It’s Soz. I know this won’t cut it with most outraged among you. So, in the words of John ‘Bigger than Jesus’ Lennon: I apologise if that will make you happy.