All apologies

I have been thinking about apologies ever since the #MeToo movement got underway so I feel like I should talk about that a little bit.

There are a lot of bad ways to apologize, you'd think that wouldn't be the case, I mean, say "I'm sorry" and you have accomplished the minimum required, but pretty much every day we see high profile people give shitty apologies, to say nothing of the stuff that happens day to day to us regular folks.

For me a proper apology has to admit wrongdoing and harm done while also being a statement that every effort will be taken to prevent it from happening again. I think that an apology without those elements doesn't really count, I mean, if you don't admit wrongdoing, then why are you apologizing? You have nothing to apologize for, if you do admit it, and you don't intend to stop, then apologizing doesn't actually do anything for the person you hurt, it's just a sop to your conscience.

But that isn't very interesting, we've had a lot of practice listening to apologies as various high profile individuals have been confronted with their past history of sexual assault lately, the best of them say that what they did is pretty fucked up, they are sorry, and they won't do it again, which meets the minimum at least. But the majority of them while still containing one or more of the above elements, also contain the phrase "that isn't me" or some variation of it.

That's a pretty fucking shitty phrase right there, it suggests that the person apologizing isn't actually responsible for the act in a way, like they must have been drunk, or temporarily insane, or even that they have changed since then. But the thing is it doesn't matter, any or all of those things might be true, but you are apologizing right now, it is not the time for explanations or excuses. And dude, no it totally is you. I mean you totally did the thing, that is why you are apologizing, the very fact that it took public accusations or even evidence to come out before you apologized means you either knew it hurt someone and were comfortable hiding that, or you don't think you did anything wrong, if it's the first situation then you have decided that someone else being hurt was secondary to your own feelings which makes your apology meaningless, and if it was the second situation than why are you even apologizing? I mean you still did wrong, the rest of us know it, but you clearly don't, so your apology is meaningless there too.

These public statements of apology aren't actually intended as a vehicle to accept responsibility and redress wrongs of course, they are PR moves designed to protect the persons brand and allow them to reenter the public eye after the furor dies down. It's a purely selfish endeavor designed for damage control only, it doesn't reveal the real feelings of these people and should not be taken as evidence that they are good people in any way. Good people don't abuse someone and then hide it for years until forced to confront it. We don't need our heroes and role models to be like this, and there are so many people out there that aren't so we don't have to invest in the ones that are.