Terrible Apologies

That’s Rep. Don Young, speaking to the Alaska Federation of Natives last week, “apologizing” for comments he made about suicide at Wasila High School earlier in the week.

At a school assembly, “school officials say, Young made what they called hurtful and insensitive statements about suicide just days after a Wasilla student took his own life.” What troubled so many at the school was Young’s assertion that suicide showed a lack of support from family and friends. The following day, at a senior center, “he said suicide in Alaska didn’t exist before government ‘largesse’ gave residents an entitlement mentality. ”

When it comes to terrible apologies, Don Young is the gift that keeps on giving. Just saying the word “sorry” doesn’t make something an apology and Young clearly isn’t apologizing for his comments about suicide; he’s just sorry that the people who are offended don’t understand that his insensitive and erratic comments, on back to back days, were simply the result of taking a hard look at the tragedy of suicide. If those people would stop fooling themselves about suicide, they’d see that he’s right … which means he really does think that suicide is the result of entitlement and lack of family support.

HT: David Watkins.

There was quite a to-do on Twitter yesterday and today, when Richard Dawkins seemed to suggest that women definitely ought to screen for and abort fetuses with Down Syndrone:

@InYourFaceNYer Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice.

— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins)

August 20, 2014

Many people thought Dawkins was telling this particular woman what to do and were outraged.

According to the Guardian, Dawkins took to his website to explain and apologize:

He added: “Those who thought I was bossily telling a woman what to do rather than let her choose, of course this was absolutely not my intention and I apologise if brevity made it look that way. My true intention was, as stated at length above, simply to say what I personally would do, based upon my own assessment of the pragmatics of the case, and my own moral philosophy which in turn is based on a desire to increase happiness and reduce suffering.”

Of course, Dawkins is very plainly arguing that “It would be immoral” to bring a Down Syndrome baby into the world “if you have the choice” not to do so. This is based, as he says, on “my own moral philosophy which in turn is based on a desire to increase happiness and reduce suffering.”

This is a fine moral philosophy, but it’s not clear what it has to do with Down Syndrome. Here’s some survey data that Dawkins apparently never heard about:

Among 2,044 parents or guardians surveyed, 79 percent reported their outlook on life was more positive because of their child with Down syndrome….

Skotko also found that among siblings ages 12 and older, 97 percent expressed feelings of pride about their brother or sister with Down syndrome and 88 percent were convinced they were better people because of their sibling with Down syndrome. A third study evaluating how adults with Down syndrome felt about themselves reports 99 percent responded they were happy with their lives, 97 percent liked who they are, and 96 percent liked how they looked.

So, it’s not clear who exactly Dawkins believes is suffering and why it’s so obviously immoral to bring a Down Syndrome baby into the world.

In addition to this issue, it seems other people were outraged because they believed Dawkins was saying that people with Down Syndrone ought to have been aborted or shouldn’t exist now. He apparently address this issue as well:

He also argued: “Those who took offence because they know and love a person with Down’s syndrome, and who thought I was saying that their loved one had no right to exist, I have sympathy for this emotional point, but it is an emotional one not a logical one. It is one of a common family of errors, one that frequently arises in the abortion debate.”

It’s not entirely clear what Dawkins is arguing here, but it sounds like he wants to discourage people from making the “emotional” point that a loved one with Down Syndrone does, in fact, have a right to exist. Instead they should be “logical” and not make what “is one of a common family of errors.” I’d go read his post to see if I could get some more information, but strangely that one page on his website is returning a “404 - Page Not Found” error and has been doing so for hours now.

So, perhaps I’m missing Dawkins’ point, but this seems like an unusual argument and one that doesn’t really fit in a post titled “Abortion & Down Syndrome: Apology for Letting Slip the Dogs of Twitterwar.”

Except, of course, that Dawkins wasn’t really apologizing in his post, as the cheeky title suggests and as his final paragraph makes very clear:

"To conclude, what I was saying simply follows logically from the ordinary pro-choice stance that most of us, I presume, espouse. My phraseology may have been tactlessly vulnerable to misunderstanding, but I can’t help feeling that at least half the problem lies in a wanton eagerness to misunderstand."

You see that last sentence there? That makes it not an apology.

Which is pretty much what Dawkins was aiming for:

I do not for one moment apologise for approaching moral philosophic questions in a logical way. There’s a place for emotion & this isn’t it.

— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins)

August 20, 2014

While I obviously disagree with the latter sentiment, I also think the former isn’t quite right. Most of Hill’s apology seemed sincere and his conclusion — that people should think of his example when they feel hurt and seek to hurt someone in response — is truly excellent. It more than makes up for what I take to be the flaw in Hill’s apology, namely the way he begins by not simply explaining the context of his remarks (which is appropriate) but by suggesting that he said a hateful word in a context other than the one in which most people say it.

Obviously, I can’t put myself in Hill’s head at the moment that he said what he said to the guy who’d been following and harassing him. But, given what he actually said to the guy, it seems pretty clear that he meant the hateful word in precisely the context in which it’s most commonly used by most people who regularly use it.

Hill’s apology was very good, but would have been even better if he’d dispensed with the excuse about not actually meaning the word as it’s always used and just said everything else that he said.

I want to begin by asking whether anyone actually expected this apology to be an effective one. Given Donald Sterling’s history and the amount of time it took for him to speak publicly about this issue, I certainly did not.

In terms of making an effective public apology, it seems to me that someone apologizing must explain why he made the error he made; must not minimize or offer excuses in an attempt to mitigate the offense; must set out clear steps he will take to make amends for the harm that was done and ensure that a similar harm won’t happen again; and, importantly, he must not apologize for offending people but for actually doing something that was offensive.

Sterling offers an apology that isn’t likely to hit the mark for most people. When he apologizes, he does so in a way that will likely seem insincere and he seems most sincere when he isn’t apologizing but explaining his jealousy and his desire for this much younger woman.

He says he was set up, that he doesn’t really talk this way; he says “If I said anything wrong, I’m sorry;” he says that he doesn’t have any idea how to fix the problem; and he claims (contrary to a good deal of evidence) that this sort of thing simply isn’t in his character. What’s more, he takes this opportunity to amplify his comments about Magic Johnson; when Anderson Cooper asks if he has apologized to Johnson, Sterling instead says the following:

If I said anything wrong, I’m sorry …. He’s a good person. I mean, what am I going to say? Has he done everything he can do to help minorities? I don’t think so. But I’ll say it, he’s great. But I don’t think he’s a good example for the children of Los Angeles.

Sterling did what he was supposed to do: He went on television, he looked pathetic, and he said the words “sorry” and “apologize” a number of times. But he failed to actually apologize in a way that would be meaningful to all the people he offended because he offered excuses and because he continued to insult some of the particular people he insulted the first time around.

Was there a way for Sterling to help himself with this interview? Perhaps there was, but it would have required him to be someone entirely different. It would have required us to all believe him when he claimed that this sort of behavior is fundamentally at odds with who he is.

[Crossposted at my blog this afternoon.]

Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky has publicly apologized after ordering one of his aides to rape a pregnant journalist.

Zhirinovsky said he had “spoken out of turn” when addressing the female reporter at a press conference on Friday, and claimed he did not know that she was pregnant when he began his tirade.

I’m sure it won’t surprise anyone that I think this is a particularly terrible apology.

"[E]veryone … that I may have offended" is always a bad way to go because it suggests the offender thinks a fair number of people weren’t or wouldn’t be offended; it’s an especially bad choice of words in this case because everyone who saw or heard about this man’s insane tirade was offended.

Worse, though, was his attempt to minimize his offense, saying only that he’d “spoken out of turn.” In fact, what he said was that one female reporter should be raped, that a second female reporter who refused to stand idly by during the tirade was a lesbian, and that pregnant women in general should remain home where they belong.

That he attempts to excuse himself by claiming “he did not know that she was pregnant when he began his tirade” compounds his repugnant behavior by implying that none of this would have been seen as a problem if he’d said these things to or about a woman who wasn’t pregnant. In other words, he seems to believe that telling his aides to rape a female reporter who asked a question he didn’t like is only offensive if that reporter turns out to be pregnant. “I’m so sorry; I didn’t realize she was pregnant” might be something to say if you fail to offer your seat to a woman on the subway. Given what Zhirinovsky said, whether or not the reporter was pregnant isn’t an issue.

It’s pretty stunning and horrible to have to write any of this, but certainly not more stunning or horrible than Zhirinovsky’s behavior.

“I am sorry if I offended anyone with my use of the N-word on Instagram,” the singer said in a statement on Saturday, Jan. 18. “It was not meant as a racial slur…I am not a racist.”

She added: “There’s no way to defend the use of the word. It was all about intention…It was used as a term of endearment toward my son who is white. I appreciate that it’s a provocative word and I apologize if it gave people the wrong impression. Forgive me.”

Her conciliatory tone is a lot different from her initial reaction. Before she realized the error of her ways, the Material Girl reposted the picture with a new caption:

As I’ve said before, if you find yourself asserting that you’re not a racist, it’s almost certainly the case that you just did something incredibly racist.

Better than saying you’re not a racist, when you’ve just demonstrated extreme insensitivity with regard to race, would be a straightforward apology and a promise to learn from your mistake. Worse is claiming that you use the n-word as a “term of endearment” toward your son. Far, far worse, obviously, is saying “#getoff of my d-k hater!” when people call you out on said “term of endearment.”

HT: Naadir Jeewa.

Potentially the wost apology of all time:

As for likening illegal immigrants to Satan, Krieser reluctantly apologized, explaining that he had used “a poor choice of words.” He eventually said he was sorry for what he said.

"If I had it to do over, I would not have put it up," Krieser said. "I certainly didn’t mean any offense."

I love the idea that this guy “certainly didn’t mean any offense” by his comments. I mean, how could anyone find it offensive to say that illegal immigrants make him think of Satan?

Oh, but perhaps there were other comments too? Indeed:

In a stunning online rant, a top Gov. Scott Walker official likened illegal immigrants to Satan during a Facebook debate over a bumper sticker declaring open season on foreigners living in the United States without documentation.

"You may see Jesus when you look at them,” Steven Krieser, assistant deputy secretary at the state Department of Transportation, wrote Tuesday regarding illegal immigrants. “I see Satan.”

Krieser wrote that a “stream of wretched criminals” is crossing the border without obstruction. These individuals, he said, “completely ruined” entire states and industries, breeding “the animus that many American citizens feel toward them.”

If these comments were “a poor choice of words,” I wonder what a good choice of words would have looked like?

Anyhow, I’m sure everyone is ready to accept his apology. I mean, it’s not like this guy has a history of questionable behavior. Oh, but of course he does:

This isn’t the first time that Krieser has found himself in hot water.

In 2011, he sent a memo to Division of Motor Vehicles employees saying they should not voluntarily tell state residents that they can obtain a voter identification card for free.

Krieser distributed the memo after lawmakers passed a law requiring state residents to present identification before they can vote.

Gosh, I wonder which potential voters might have had a more difficult time voting as a result of Krieser’s memo …

HT: Michael Tofias.

That’s Minnesota State Representative Ryan Winkler, “apologizing" for referring to Justice Clarence Thomas as “Uncle Thomas" after yesterday’s Voting Rights Act ruling.

On his Twitter account Tuesday, state Rep. Ryan Winkler called the justices’ 5-4 ruling striking down a part of the law racist, and the work of “four accomplices to race discrimination and one Uncle Thomas” ….

That tweet was quickly deleted, and Mr. Winkler, who is white and represents some upper middle class suburbs west-southwest of Minneapolis, offered a conditional-tense quasi-apology in subsequent tweets.

He said he “didn’t think it was offensive to suggest that Justice Thomas should be even more concerned about racial discrimination than colleagues. But if such a suggestion is offensive, I apologize.”

So … if you’re playing along at home, that’s a politician who was outraged by a Supreme Court ruling on the topic of racism pouring some of his own special brand of racist gasoline onto yesterday’s raging bonfire of racism.

And then the terrible, terrible apology was:

A) I didn’t know that calling a black man an “Uncle Tom" was racist;

B) there’s some debate about whether it’s actually racist at all (presumably this debate mostly happens amongst racists);

C) black people should always think the way I think black people should think because I have a good sense of what’s in their interest; and

D) sorry if anyone was offended by this thing I wrote that, if you look at A) and B) above, you’ll see might not really be offensive unless you’re just overly sensitive.

With regard to A) above (and to the quote with which this blog post began),  Rep. Winkler’s Wikipedia page was recently updated to include this line: "Such a claim could raise questions about the veracity of his claim to have a BA in History from Harvard University."

Seriously, though, will no one save these people from themselves and prohibit them from posting their thoughts on the internet?

HT: Ryan McIntosh.

(Cross-posted on my blog)

Serena Williams on Wednesday offered a slightly new twist on the classic non-apology apology after she was quoted by Rolling Stone delivering shockingly insensitive remarks about the Steubenville rape case, in which a 16-year-old girl was raped by two high school football players. Here’s her full statement from today (emphasis added):

“What happened in Steubenville was a real shock for me. I was deeply saddened. For someone to be raped, and at only sixteen, is such a horrible tragedy! For both families involved – that of the rape victim and of the accused. I am currently reaching out to the girl’s family to let her know that I am deeply sorry for what was written in the Rolling Stone article. What was written – what I supposedly said – is insensitive and hurtful, and I by no means would say or insinuate that she was at all to blame.

“I have fought all of my career for women’s equality, women’s equal rights, respect in their fields – anything I could do to support women I have done. My prayers and support always goes out to the rape victim. In this case, most especially, to an innocent sixteen year old child.”

And here’s the original quote as published by Rolling Stone in its profile of Williams. You’ll see why it didn’t take a leap for many to read the remarks as a version of the “she was asking for it” defense. (To say nothing of the fact that Williams decided to discuss the teen’s virginity.):

“Do you think it was fair, what they got? They did something stupid, but I don’t know. I’m not blaming the girl, but if you’re a 16-year-old and you’re drunk like that, your parents should teach you—don’t take drinks from other people. She’s 16, why was she that drunk where she doesn’t remember? It could have been much worse. She’s lucky. Obviously I don’t know, maybe she wasn’t a virgin, but she shouldn’t have put herself in that position, unless they slipped her something, then that’s different.”

It’s best not to say something terrible in the first place. But when you do, it’s best to apologize for saying that terrible thing, rather than apologizing that it was printed in a magazine and then implying that you might not actually have said the terrible thing in the first place. Better still, just instruct your publicist to draft a compelling apology … unless this is what the publicist thought was a compelling apology, in which case fire your publicist.

HT: Ian McDonald.

In the wake of a controversy that erupted around an address by Center for Inquiry CEO Ron Lindsay designed to welcome participants to the Women in Secularism 2 conference last month, the CFI Board released a statement that reads, in part:

The Center for Inquiry, including its CEO, is dedicated to advancing the status of women and promoting women’s issues, and this was the motivation for its sponsorship of the two Women in Secularism conferences. The CFI Board wishes to express its unhappiness with the controversy surrounding the recent Women in Secularism Conference 2.

CFI believes in respectful debate and dialogue. We appreciate the many insights and varied opinions communicated to us. Going forward, we will endeavor to work with all elements of the secular movement to enhance our common values and strengthen our solidarity as we struggle together for full equality and respect for women around the world.

This is a terrible apology.

The Board doesn’t apologize to offended participants, who felt they were being lectured at by the CEO rather than welcomed by him and who then felt directly attacked by him, as when he directly attacked some of them in a blog post. (Lindsay’s own apology for that blog post is here.)

Instead, the Board chose to “express its unhappiness with the controversy” rather than with the way that its CEO handled his task of welcoming participants or engaging with them when they took to the internet to lament parts of his address that they felt were overtly critical of the role of feminism in secularism (as he suggested it was sometimes used to silence men).

It’s pretty much a guarantee that issuing a non-apology won’t achieve the result of bringing a month-old controvery under control; instead, it’s very likely to anger all the people who were offended in the first place.

HT: Olivia Hunt.

I had been asked to comment on Keynes’s famous observation “In the long run we are all dead.” The point I had made in my presentation was that in the long run our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are alive, and will have to deal with the consequences of our economic actions.

But I should not have suggested – in an off-the-cuff response that was not part of my presentation – that Keynes was indifferent to the long run because he had no children, nor that he had no children because he was gay. This was doubly stupid. First, it is obvious that people who do not have children also care about future generations. Second, I had forgotten that Keynes’s wife Lydia miscarried.

My disagreements with Keynes’s economic philosophy have never had anything to do with his sexual orientation. It is simply false to suggest, as I did, that his approach to economic policy was inspired by any aspect of his personal life.

This is a promising apology from a prominent person who made a public misstep, which (as readers of the Terrible Apologies blog well know) is pretty rare. But then Ferguson goes and messes it up:

As those who know me and my work are well aware, I detest all prejudice, sexual or otherwise.

With this sentence, Ferguson effectively excuses himself rather than waiting for the people he offended to excuse him after he has apologized. Others might have said, “We forgive you because you’ve issued a compelling apology and because, of course, we know from our interactions with you or your work that you detest all prejudice.” Or they might not have. But nothing good can come of someone who says something prejudiced then proclaiming that he isn’t at all prejudiced. It just rings impossibly hollow when someone says, “I’m obviously not racist …” or “I am well known for having a high opinion of several Jews ….”

Whatever comes next is bound to be bad news.

If you’ve done something wrong, it’s best to simply say, “I’ve done something wrong and I’m terribly sorry for it” rather than to explain that you’re really not the sort of person who does these wrong things. If you’re really not that sort of person, you either wouldn’t have said the sort of offensive thing you said or people who know you would be rushing forward to explain that you’re really not this sort of person.

In short, excusing yourself in the middle of “An Unqualified Apology” really just provides a big qualifier for that apology.