Did your mother teach you how to make a proper apology when you were a little kid, otherwise you were grounded to your left ear for life? Me too. Did your mother or father tell you if you tried to weasel out, rather than telling the truth, it would go harder with you? Mine too.

In Western culture, an adequate apology, even for immigrants who have other ways of making recompense in their own cultures, is supposed to cover the entire ‘mea culpa’ territory and be direct, showing humility somehow, but not giving out a stilted high oratory, nor muffled as though gargling marbles.

Though most everyone carries ‘duck and cover’ as a survival instinct, public apology seems most effective when it is more along the lines of street talk, that is, down to earth, straightforward, heavy in nouns and verbs about the authentic issues and concerns… rather than vaguely stated without showing any gritty insight nor transparent accountability

Rather than carrying street cred though, Senator Larry Craig’s apology carries an odd vagary of language that a full and real apology would not. Instead of specificity in language, the limited lexicon used by the Senator gives the impression of trying to row around the huge dead elephant that washed up in his living room recently…

Senator Craig writes on his website: http://craig.senate.gov/keyportal.cfm

“To the Idahoans I represent, to my staff, my Senate colleagues and, most importantly, my wife and our family, I apologize for what I have caused.
I am deeply sorry.
I have little control over what people choose to believe…”

*****The last sentence infers that what has occurred is not an issue of facts based on knowing, but a fantasy of people’s ‘beliefs.’ Beliefs are far different than knowings. Thus Senator Craig tells us how to understand all this: beliefs can be challenged.

However, contrary to the Senator’s seeming attempt to redefine the issues, certain factual matters of law and legalities, still remain.

Let’s move to the first sentence, which covers to whom the Senator is making the apology: Idahoans, staff, colleagues, wife, family…. and all those are proper to appeal to.

Yet, it leaves out many people and groups of people who seem to have been ill-affected by his decisions in life, and his countervalent votes in public life. It leaves out people in the US who are already mortified about the state of the GOP in recent months and years. It leaves out those who currently have ‘business’ with him, who have allied with him and whom he was working on projects with, and now, have to start all over lobbying someone else. Lots of dreams of his Senatorial support died this week.

In our family if you offended the whole family and only apologized to your mother, father, and one cousin but left all others out who were nonetheless affected, that’d be a deal-breaker about your sincerity. Back to the corner you’d go to think things through more rationally.

The second sentence: “I am deeply sorry,” line has to be taken in context with an earlier line: “I apologize for what I have caused.” I wouldn’t put a cynical, “Yeah, sure you’re sorry, you’re sorry for being caught.” But, I agree with Michelle Malkin, certainly in concept: She calls the Senator’s words being a “crapweasel”
http://michellemalkin.com/2007/08/28/the-larry-craig-mess/

She’s referring to the on again, off again, Finnegan that Senator Craig has been doing to explain himself; the dodging and seeming prevaricating with great huffing pomposity.

There is huge aversion going on, as most can see. My analytic training in reading lexicon and syntactical subtext, tells me that in Senator Craig’s letter, the syntax appears to be arranged specifically in order to avoid, rather than to explicate. In other words, to present in opaque, instead of in all transparency.

“What I caused” is an effort toward accountability, but is weakened greatly by not accounting, not explicating what occurred and how it came to be. The phrase makes an inference, instead, that the writer did little or nothing that would have set this mess into motion… that some minor error set off this torque.

I don’t say this to revile the Senator; no person on this earth, as we saw recently with Mother Teresa herself, is without flaws, foibles and failings. I am more inclined to have sympathy for people who are otherwise good or trying to be to the best of their current knowledge, but who fall into a fracturing dilemma… most of us are on earth trying to learn and are doing ok some days… some days we’re better than we’re capable of being, and on other days, less than we could be… and all shades in between.

So, I’d rather say it this way, generally, whether about priests who intrude on children, whether about Neil Bush (G. W.’s brother) and his Savings and Loan debacle that caused the collapse of the hard-earned savings of elderly people… also without repair… in all these cases and so many more, the people responsible for the ‘failure’ or damage or breakage, write in big red letters that they are sidestepping, falsifying, or outright telling falsehoods when they do not fulfill the most basic apology we teach to our own little children, when adults do not speak as we would expect a five year old to speak in making a full apology that we would accept and thus begin to re-normalize relationships again.

There’s a saying in my family: if you want to make people despise you, give them no reason or opportunity to grant genuine forgiveness.

Inauthentic apology makes the granting of genuine forgiveness, and therefore closeness and repair between the offended and the offending, impossible.

Denials of ill and offending behavior, and the counter-grudges that come then against those who have passed off their egregious wrongs.. these enable the two or more opposing sides to dig in deeper yet. Nothing of repair comes from that.

The tandem of denials, patronizing, making light of… and grudges, planned avengings and hatred… continue endlessly then. See any part of the world where genuine accounting and apology is missing between peoples who have been killing each other for eons. It’s not enough to say, “Sorry, I’ll stop” Not if you want close relationship.

And what is an authentic accounting? In our family and many other families, a full apology with full accountability would go something like this… the point being to reunite and repair the relationship(s) that have veered or come undone:

–say what you did exactly,
–say why you did it, (how you got into doing it)
–say exactly what you are sorry for,
–say how you now see it affected others specifically,
–say what you will now do instead… and
–ask what you can do to repair what you have done to others’ feelings, thoughts, trust, and other matters.

Let’s just say that kind of apology is only about five sentences long, and not meant to be a slavering Inquisition, but a way to mend self and others. Let’s also say the last part, asking what one can do to repair, via others’ needs… well, then the matter might become a discussion that takes some time; more time if the mis-step is big, less time if the error is smaller.

That’s not much to ask. Five sentences that show insight, accountibilites, future plans to repair, all thought out, in advance.

When an educated person sidesteps what most little children know about what needs to be in an apology in order to be accepted back again with open arms, all in order to start over again and remake the relationship… it causes a consideration about the judgment of an official who seems to believe that intelligent constituents and others will believe or be calmed or gulled by an apology made of slurry, rather than solidly genuine affect…

The adult who is apologizing here, is a Senator, a person of the highest stature that the people and government can grant outside of the Executive branch. This is a Senator who has status and power over others, who has huge influence in the policy decisions that affect all of us.

His reach and ability to influence exceeds ours by light years. This power as a Senator is shared by only a mere, MERE, 99 other men and women in our nation. Think of the magnitude of that privilege and responsibility. In comparison, the paucity of the words in this public ‘apology’ seem like a giant offering a gnat on a plate.

This powerful Senator in our national world, appears to have acted and voted against an entire group of people and their equal rights ‘to life and pursuit of happiness,’ most centrally gays and lesbians, while he has seemingly been a peripheral or central member of that very same group himself.

If, as the saying goes, ‘with much privilege comes much responsibility’… then one of those responsibilities must lean hard toward giving a faithful accounting on this ’split’ in the Senator’s psyche. As much for his own life, as for those lives of innocent others… in an apology, it would have been valuable if the Senator had told us how nearly unequivocal power can twist a person to vote with self-loathing instead of self-integrity.

Ultimately, that kind of authentic self-inquiry and apology may bring the greatest and most lasting reconciliation, all the way around, for all the parties.

There’s a saying in the MidEast: A lost soul in the desert has no enemies. Except the desert itself.

The Western version is: Know thyself.

That’s what we’re all trying to do Senator. And, you’re invited.

CODA
This issue of inadequate and ‘who me? “apologies” by ‘leaders’ of such stellar reach, particularly caught my eye… when the cardinals of the Catholic Church began their public apologies (to those invaded and harmed by pedophile priests) with these words: ‘The Church regrets what occurred.” “Mother Church and her people are sorry for what has happened…” without one whit of self-accountability. I admit, I somewhat uncharacteristically flew up into the sky like Rodan over it all. We were talking about how priests ruined the sacred sexual unfoldment of young children for life, and the ‘higher-ups’ were acting like it was merely something akin to a sprained ankle.

The article I wrote then on inadequate response and the pathetic attempts to blame anyone except themselves in the pedophiles’ scandal (scandal not being the issue, criminality on the part of consecrated men, being the central issue, whether instigators or enablers)… if you’d like to read it, it is here. http://uscatholic.claretians.org/site/News2?abbr=usc_&page=NewsArticle&id=5834&security=1201&news_iv_ctrl=-1

U.S. Catholic magazine is created monthly by the good order of Claretians. The Vatican has tried to steer them and silence various in their publications over time. The Claretians are a stalwart and brave group of souls who keep publishing for families and the young and old, nonetheless.