All Apologies: Who Do We Believe?

Oct. 13, 2006 — -- Mel Gibson's public apologies this week about his drunken-driving and anti-Semitic remarks are just the latest in a long line of high-profile mea culpas. Over the last 30 years, society has been rife with public figures seeking forgiveness.

Who could forget televangelist Jimmy Swaggart's tearful plea for mercy before his congregation in 1988? During the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Bill Clinton went before a national audience and admitted to having a relationship "that was not appropriate." More recently, actor Russell Crowe told David Letterman that he was "extremely sorry" for throwing a phone at a hotel worker.

Lately, a newly abashed bunch hopes you'll forgive till it hurts: Mark Foley, who resigned in disgrace from Congress; Virginia Sen. George Allen, under fire for insensitive racial comments; and former New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey, peddling a new book about the sex scandal that brought down his administration.

Not everyone is enthralled by the boom in verbal self-flagellation.

"It's part of public relations. It has nothing to do with real apologies," said Michael Josephson, founder of the Josephson Institute of Ethics in Los Angeles. "The public apology is sort of like a public contribution, which is made to look like charity but really has nothing to do with philanthropy.

Paul Slansky, co-author of the book "My Bad: 25 Years of Public Apologies," believes that direct apologies work best.

"It's where the person gets up in front of the camera and really almost looks the camera in the eye and says, 'I really screwed up. I know I screwed up. Please forgive me,'" he said.

Typically, that's where no one dashes to rehab or uses the word "if." According to Slansky, conditional apologies usually fail, as when Allen tried to apologize for calling an Indian-American man "macaca" by saying, "If I had any idea it was derogatory, I would not have used it. It's a made-up word. My niece, we call Maka Maka."