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."

Another example -- Janet Jackson's videotaped apology for a SuperBowl half-time show in which one of her breasts was flashed before a huge television audience.

"If I offended anyone that was truly not my intention," the superstar said at the time.

'Intent Is Everything'

Evaluating whether a public apology is heartfelt or insincere can be a challenge.

"Intent is everything. Intentionality is key to whether or not these are meaningful or phony," Josephson says. "We have to detect sincerity. In a way, we're all jurors. The problem is so many public apologies are literally choreographed."

Nothing screams choreography like hiding behind a written apology, as Prince Harry did when he was photographed wearing a Nazi uniform. When dealing with the fallout of a scandal, issuing a mere statement is often not enough.

"If you look at a 10-point system, I think you lose five points immediately if you just put out a statement and it's not -- and you're not saying the words," Slansky says.

Some of the most effective public apologies go for abject humility, and in this sense, Hugh Grant's appearance on "The Tonight Show" was considered state-of-the-art crisis management.

To audience applause, Grant offered no excuses for being caught soliciting a prostitute.

"I think you know in life pretty much what's a good thing to do and what's a bad thing. I did a bad thing. There you have it." Grant added, "In a curious kind of way, I think I need to suffer for this, for the right thing."

Other scandalized figures want to feel the forgiveness without enduring the pain, but there's really no way around it, according to Josephson.

"My willingness to forgive you, though, is often affected by whether I think you have gone through some kind of painful remorse. You need to pay a price," he says. "Once I believe you've paid the price it's a lot easier for me to let it go."

Some people you would think would have apologized may not have. At least, not explicitly. Take Martha Stewart. When Barbara Walters asked her why she didn't express remorse, Stewart said, "I think I was apologetic. I think I was contrite."

Vice President Dick Cheney did seem contrite when he discussed the accidental shooting of his friend Harry Whittington. "You can't blame anybody else," he told Fox News. But Cheney never actually said "I'm sorry" publicly. One man did apologize, though -- Harry Whittington.

"Well, that's the wildest thing there is, because the guy who got shot apologized for ruining Cheney's week," Slansky says.

Giving Them a Pass

And remember Janet Jackson's too-little, too-late so-sorry? Well, she's taken it back. She recently told Oprah Winfrey, "It was an accident. And the management that I had at the time, they thought it was important for me to do. I had said before I sat down to record the apology, I said to them, 'Why am I apologizing?'"

As for Mel Gibson, he admits to having a "malady of the soul."

"Sometimes you need a cold bucket of water in the face to sort of snap to. In my case, public humiliation on a global scale seems to be what was required," he said.

But the man who has spent months poring over public apologies says even people who don't think Gibson is being sincere will give him a pass anyway.

"In the celebrity culture, don't we like to build 'em up and knock 'em down and see 'em come back again and knock 'em down again?" Slansky says. "It's just part of the show."