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Celebrity apologies and crocodile tears

Angela Mollard

by Angela Mollard

20 Mar 05:50am

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Filed under: Apology, Celebrity, Charlie Sheen, Mel Gibson, Society

18 comments

Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Blimey, we can barely make it through a week without someone proffering an apology.

S-o-r-r-y. Photo: Getty Images.

Those above came from John Galliano, Tiger Woods, Todd Carney, Ricky Nixon and Fergie, the Duchess of York – whose latest transgression led her to admit: “I am just so contrite, I cannot say.”

This, just two weeks after her last apology for offering to sell access to her ex-husband, saying she needed to “find the lotus flower within”.

Ricky’s also seeking his inner lotus, and while he didn’t actually say “sorry” – preferring the term “inappropriate dealings” – we all know he was truly regretful, as you would be if you’d ruined your reputation by playing around with a teenager who’d made you look like a fool.

With the footy season now underway, we can expect a few more sorries. And, if momentum halts, we can always rely on Mel Gibson to fill in the gaps, because contrition is the latest celebrity accessory: I’m famous, therefore I’m sorry. Unless I’m Charlie Sheen.

My problem with the latest round of apologies is that they’re as sincere as my 10-year-old’s response to dumping a bucket of water on her sister in the bath. “Soh-ree,” she snarled, in much the same fashion as I suspect Galliano stamped his pony-skin clad foot and apologised after his anti-semitic rant.

Tiger Woods at least had the decency to rock up in a suit to apologise for his extramarital match play, but he didn’t actually sound honest as he delivered his 14-minute PR-spun script. He sounded angry. At being rumbled.

To err is human and to admit it is mortifying. But an apology is only meaningful if it shows genuine remorse and a will to restore integrity for its own sake, not for public perception. 

Take the surgeon who mistakenly removed my friend’s healthy fallopian tube instead of her diseased one. Huge mistake and alarming for the hospital if she’d chosen to go public.

But in addressing it face-to-face, rather than through lawyers, she knew the doctor’s sorrow was sincere and accepted the offer of as many IVF treatments as she needed to fall pregnant.

Likewise the substitute teacher who, in a frazzled moment, revealed to a class that one of their classmates was on mood-altering medication. She immediately confessed her error and the school apologised to the family.

We all do things that are thoughtless, stupid, cruel and wrong. I once wrote a spiky piece about a celebrity. I loathed myself for it. Still do. I even wrote her a long apology and explanation, but the email sits in my drafts folder, unsent. Why? Because saying sorry was too easy.

What was harder was having the courage to leave a job that demanded those sorts of articles, and – with time and thought – recalibrate my personal integrity.

No one will forget Matthew Johns’ apology on A Current Affair. Afterwards, his wife, Trish, threw up and Johns had to be helped to stand. His remorse seemed authentic, but only time can restore rectitude and reputation.

The experience of being wrong helps to make us better people, says author Kathryn Schulz. “Error, even though it sometimes feels like despair, is actually much closer in spirit to hope,” she writes in her book, Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error.

“We get things wrong because we have an enduring confidence in our own minds; and we face up to that wrongness in the faith that, having learnt something, we’ll get it right next time.”

Listening, Mel?

Angela Mollard is a columnist for Sunday Life magazine.

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18 comments

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    • John C says:

      05:04am | 20/03/11

      And to this list, can we add Rudd’s National Apology. The plight of our indigenous people has not changed. Words are easy, action requires motivation and effort - much easier to say sorry, makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside and oh so self-satisfied.

      Reply

    • Unionist says:

      07:28am | 20/03/11

      Abbott should say sorry for all his policy blowout from the Howard era and he accuses Labor of wasteful spending. He can also say sorry for being a pathetic opposition leader… the most unimaginative as well as a being policy void this country has ever seen.

    • Seano says:

      08:17am | 20/03/11

      “Part of recovery is having some validation and some acknowledgement that it was bad and that it shouldn’t have happened.”

      http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/02/12/2159248.htm

      How is easing people’s hurt a bad thing? And why does it offend you so?

      So many screamed before the apology that it would lead to a landslide of compensation which of course never was going to or did happen. Really most of the objection to doing the right thing was little more than thinly disguised bigotry.

      Yes something neeeds to be done about the plight of Aboriginal people but saying we are sorry to people we have wronged is never a bad thing.

    • Economist says:

      08:58am | 20/03/11

      How repugnant. It even makes the nose bleed section. I thought the focus was on celebrity apologies but as usual the first comments out are political. John C have you ever asked an indigenous person about the apology. Many of the them appreciated it, particularly given the recalcitrant nature of the previous government.

      In addition the government is doing a number of things to help Indigenous Australians, as I imagine would a Liberal government. 

      As for judging whether someone is sincere in their apology, that’s a pretty tough call. Is it self guilt, or the fact that they got caught out and it may cost them millions in sponsorship that makes a celebrity fell sick, or is it genuine empathy and sincerity for their victim of the lie.

    • John C says:

      06:56pm | 20/03/11

      You miss the point Economist. There is nothing wrong with an apology so longas, in the context if the apology to the indigenous people of Australia, something meaningful comes about.

      Labor is doing little of real substance other than hoping piously and this is what is wrong with the apology.

      The problem with so many so-called progressives - I hesitate to use the words latte and Chardonnay - is that they continually bewail the plight of indigenous and drone on and on about collective gulit but very few of them do anything concrete to back up their feel-good principles. How many of them do any volunteer work for the cause or fork over any money. And let us not forget that many of the white people who work in this field do it for a wage and not out of love.

    • Seano says:

      11:26am | 21/03/11

      Making people feel better about wrongs that have been done to them by acknowledging the wrong and apologising for it is doing something meaningful.

    • Damocles says:

      04:54pm | 21/03/11

      Hey Unionist (could you be called anything else?) Did I read right? “Abbott say sorry for policy blowout from the Howard era and he accuses Labor of wasteful spending”....you’re kidding right? Howard leaves the coffers full. Labor blows it all and you accuse Abbott/ Howard of wasteful spending! Get off the whacky tobaccy mate! Labor spend like there is no tomorrow, but as you will find very soon, there is a tomorrow and there will be a price to pay and guess who’ll pay it…..the worker/ taxpayer…...yep, the good old worker….are there any workers out there that still hold the antiquated belief that Labor stands for “labour”? Dream on!

    • acotrel says:

      06:00am | 20/03/11

      I wonder if any oif those people who’ve trivialised the nuclear events in Japan will acknowledge that they were wrong, if the full bit happens?

      Reply

    • Just plain wrong says:

      10:35am | 20/03/11

      The ones who criticised Rudd for insisting Japan provide clear and precise information at the start of this disaster should be hanging their heads in shame.

    • Seano says:

      08:18am | 20/03/11

      The biggest thing I’ve noticed about Mel Gibson is that we no longer refer to him as “Aussie” Mel or “Our” Mel.

      Reply

    • Carz says:

      08:47am | 20/03/11

      The problem is that so many of these celebrities do seem very sorry, but for being caught rather than for their behaviour. This is reflected across society where, in so many ways, doing the wrong thing is only considered wrong if you get caught (eg. drink driving, using illegal drugs, making sexist, racist or other discriminatory remarks). When we can stop making excuses for our own bad behaviour (eg. blaming the cops who caught them speeding or drink driving) then maybe we, as a society, can start to expect a similar attitude amongst celebrities.

      Reply

    • Schroedinger says:

      09:06am | 20/03/11

      Acotrel - will you be apologising for doom saying (with no data) if “the full bit” doesn’t happen? And can you define “the full bit” for us, please? I am dying to hear what someone with obviously no scientific training thinks this entails…are you still waiting for the guys at CERN to apologiser for the black hole they created too?

      Reply

    • Nathan says:

      11:30am | 20/03/11

      Why do we require celebrities to make public apologies, and be sincere about it? Last time I checked, Mel Gibson or Tiger Woods never wronged me, so why should I expect an apology from them? If they’ve done something wrong, let them say sorry to the people they actually affected, and let’s stop this PR charade which the public, for whatever self-entitled reason, demands.

      Reply

    • stephen says:

      04:14pm | 20/03/11

      Yeah but if Mel and the rest of’em would stop apologizing to us we’d stop taking notice.
      Fact is, we really don’t give a hoot, but is sure is entertaining watchin em grovel.
      So let’em. They understand that the stuff they do as pros,(and can you imagine Arnold Palmer, Gary Cooper or anyone with a bit of class falling into the mud so often ?) is mostly of poor quality, (except for Tige of course, but I understand a ‘hole in one’ is not his real motive) so why can’t they ‘act’ when they apologize ?
      They’re gonna do it again, and we’ll all get another laugh.
      (Life was so boring until the paparazzi came along.)

    • Reg says:

      08:59am | 21/03/11

      Those who hang off the apron strings of the famous for their thrills are bound to be disappointed, unless their own standards are just as low.

      The real threat to most ordinary people is that of accidentally disclosing so much detail on the internet that the inevitable lurkers can identify who you are talking about and feed your comments back to the individual.

      There is no way an apology can repair the damage disseminated by persons unknown, such that the internet becomes a mechanism of gossip, reducing its usefulness to that of silly harmless exchanges of the same importance as those of the passing starlets.

      Reply

    • Shane says:

      09:18am | 21/03/11

      Mel Gibson has a lot less to apologise for than the media would have you believe. He went on a drunken rant with an opinion that, although poorly expressed, is shared by a large proportion of people who feel that Israel is responsible for a lot of suffering in the world. He slapped his now-ex, he says, because she was in hysterics whilst carrying a baby. I don’t think he should have to apologide for either of those things. I would prefer his ex to have a black eye than for her to unknowingly shake or drop a newborn.

      Was his manner ideal in either ‘the rant’ or ‘the slap’? No. Of course not.

      Could he have zipped his mouth and kept his opinion to himself? Sure, and it would’ve been the smarter option. But if everyone who expresses an anti-Israel belief is to be shouted down, then that is a major problem.
      If he slapped her in rage, then that is inexcusable. But if his story is true, I completely understand his actions.

      Reply

    • Thommo says:

      09:41am | 21/03/11

      Mel Gibson has ABSOLUTELY nothing to apologise about. He is a true hero. Keep up the good work Mel.

      Reply

    • Traxster says:

      11:19am | 21/03/11

      Aand he’ll be an even bigger…erm….hero once he learns to act.

 
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