Spring is here and love is in the air, but so is pollen here in Texas and apologies abounding all across this land.
It is good to hear apologies, but when there are many apologies, there must also be a lot of not-so-nice things that people feel they have to apologize for.
Last week must have been one for the record books when it comes to apologies.
Here are just a few:
Alaska Rep. Don Young issued an apology Friday for using the term “wetbacks” when discussing migrant works, acknowledging it is an “insensitive term” that he says should have been left behind with the last century. The apology came after House Speaker John Boehner and other Republican Party leaders denounced Young on Friday for using the term.
CBS issued an on-air apology to U.S. veterans during the opening minutes of its “Amazing Race” reality show on Sunday night as a result of complaints the network received for the previous week’s segment that featured competitors in Vietnam watching repeated performances of a communist victory song and racing to a war memorial made from a downed American B-52.
“Parts of last Sunday’s episode, filmed in Vietnam, were insensitive to a group that is very important to us: our nation’s veterans,” the network said. “We want to apologize to veterans – particularly those who served in Vietnam – as well as their families and any viewers who were offended by the broadcast. All of us here have the most profound respect for the men and women who fight for our country.”
Dr. Ben Carson on Friday apologized for remarks he made earlier in the week linking homosexuality to bestiality.
“I love gay people. I love straight people,” Carson said on CNN’s “The Situation Room.” “So this was really, I think, on my behalf, somewhat insensitive and I certainly apologize if I offended anyone, because I was not in any way comparing gays with people who engage in bestiality or sexual child abuse.”
Carson became an overnight sensation on the right after criticizing President Obama, who was seated directly to his right, at the National Prayer Breakfast earlier this year.
A religious group in Minnesota issued a public half-apology on Friday for an online posting that accused supporters of marriage equality of practicing the “Nazi philosophy of propaganda,” Minnesota Public Radio reported.It its statement, Minnesota for Marriage said it “regrets that statements considered by many to be offensive” appeared on the website of Minnesota Pastors for Marriage, a faith-based coalition seeking to ban marriage between LGBT couples.
In a rare public appearance since admitting to an extramarital affair, David Petraeus apologized Tuesday night for the scandal that led to his resignation as head of the CIA last year.
Petraeus, a retired four-star general, has stayed out of the limelight since the affair was revealed in November.
“Please allow me to begin my remarks this evening by reiterating how deeply I regret and apologize for the circumstances that led to my resignation from the CIA and caused such pain for my family, friends and supporters,” Petraeus told a crowd gathered at a Los Angeles hotel ballroom. “I am also keenly aware that the reason for my recent journey was my own doing.”
Ford and its Indian advertising agency have apologized for ads showing women in bondage and admitted that they should never have been created at all.One of the ads for the Ford Figo subcompact car show caricatures of three scantily clad women gagged, bound, and crammed into the back of the Figo while Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi looks back from the front seat, smiling and giving the “peace sign.” The tag line at the bottom of the ad says, “Leave Your Worries Behind.”
Another ad with the same tag line shows a caricature of Paris Hilton winking while the Kardashian sisters are gagged and bound in the back of the Figo.
Even the Internal Revenue Service caught the “apologitis” bug:
“IRS Apologizes for Wasting Taxpayer Money on ‘Star Trek’ Parody: ‘Not…the Best Stewardship of resources,’” says TheBlaze about a video parody of the TV show “Star Trek” filmed by Internal Revenue Service employees at an agency studio in Maryland and another parodying the TV show “Gilligan’s Island,” that cost about $60,000 to produce. The six-minute clip was was shown at the opening of a 2010 training and leadership conference, but even the Associated Press notes that it “does not appear to have any training value.”
But “apologitis” seems to have gone global reaching Israel and as far as Australia:
Israel has apologized for the deaths of nine pro-Palestinian Turkish activists after a naval raid on a ship bound for the Gaza Strip in 2010.
A senior Obama administration official said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed regret and acknowledged “operational mistakes” in a phone call with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan accepted the apology, the official said.
Netanyahu also agreed to compensate the families of the victims in the incident, Reuters reported.
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard delivered a historic national apology in Parliament to the thousands of unwed mothers who were forced by government policies to give up their babies for adoption over several decades.
More than 800 people affected by the policy cried and cheered as they listened to the apology in the Great Hall of Parliament House and responded with a standing ovation when it was finished.
A national apology was recommended a year ago by a Senate committee that investigated the impacts of the now-discredited policies. Unwed mothers were pressured, deceived and threatened into giving up their babies from World War II until the early 1970s so they could be adopted by married couples, which was perceived to be in the children’s best interests, the committee report found.
“Today this Parliament on behalf of the Australian people takes responsibility and apologizes for the policies and practices that forced the separation of mothers from their babies, which created a lifelong legacy of pain and suffering,” Gillard told the audience Thursday.
With “apologitis” in the air, the tenth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war — which we observed last week — would have been an appropriate occasion to hear one or two apologies from the one, or two, or three or more responsible for that disastrous war…
Image: www.shutterstock.com
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.