Sorry Doesn’t Seem To Be The Hardest Word Anymore
When Elton John penned his famous song in 1976 (and more memorably for me when Blue covered it in 2002) he was perhaps trying to target melancholic lovers who had regrettably made a mistake more than a future generation of famous people looking to make amends, and if that was the case then he surely succeeded. But if he was trying to be a greedy little blighter and appeal to both, then I’m sorry (pun intended) to say that he didn’t quite achieve his goal (but I’ll leave Blue out of that blame because of Lee Ryan’s top class high notes). With every passing scandal that seems to permeate the many screens of our lives in these modern times, there comes a half-hearted copy and paste apology shortly after it, and after that apology comes public forgiveness before everything then resumes as normal.
As a generation, have we simply given up on making people earn forgiveness? Or do we simply have the collective attention span of goldfish? In this article I will look at the modern trend of how public apologies can supposedly wipe out any wrongdoing of celebrities, paying particular attention to the future president Mr Trump. If that doesn’t sound like something you would be interested in then I am super #sorry #notsorry. I’ll stop now, promise.
Starting with most recent, let’s talk about president-elect Donald J. Trump who, in fairness, has a hell of a lot to apologise for. Less than two weeks before the election date, pussygrab-gate happened and most liberals thought it finally spelled the end of the world’s worst social experiment. But boy how they were wrong! As beautifully captured by Aaron Sorkin in an open letter to his daughter and wife, the USA has elected someone who displays, or has displayed if you are taking his words as gospel, many of the traits that parents and adults alike attempt to eliminate from children in their early development; sexism, bigotry, racism, prejudice and even more general distasteful characteristics like disrespect, vulgarity and impetuousness to name but a few.
Now the man sitting at the head of their country’s table is serving to undermine all of those lessons and basically dispel any moments where we tell young people that ‘manners will get you everywhere’ or to ‘treat others how you would like to be treated yourself’, because now there is living proof that those values aren’t the be all and end all. Apparently you can accuse someone of not being able to fulfil their job because of their race, you can insult the parents of a man who sacrificed his life for his country and of course you can indeed grab a woman by their pussy. But before you get carried away and start committing crimes, try to remember the words that Trump uttered before the now infamous vagina-grasp line, these things are only possible if you’re “a star”. And that’s the long and short of it really.
In most other lines of work, categorical proof of sexism in the form of a video would spell the end of your tenure in that job. But not only did Trump not suffer the same fate of losing the right to his position, a few days later he was actually elected to the Oval Office. This just goes to show how much famous people can get away with as long as they appear to be sorry. Something which, in itself, we take for granted. Go back now and watch the video of Donald Trump’s apology and you will notice that he never once says the word sorry. He says that he has “said and done things he regrets” and that this was “one of them”, he pledges “to be a better man tomorrow” and he even uses the blisteringly harsh term of “foolish” when describing his behaviour. But he never actually uses the word most of us associate with apologies. So what does this teach us? Celebrities get to say sorry, and sometimes not even, and then everything is forgiven. It’s not exactly the best lesson to preach to the youth of today.
So is sorry good enough? How do we gage the sincerity behind it? Sticking with Trump for now and bearing in mind all of the previous scandals he has been involved in and all the suspect words he has spoken in public, do we truly believe him when he says he will be a better man? Do we believe him when he says he has changed? In his poignantly funny Netflix series Master of None, Aziz Ansari writes a similar plot-line into episode 4 Indians on TV. After he accidentally gets left on an email thread, Aziz Ansari’s character Dev reads a racist joke about his ethnicity made by the head of a television company. After agreeing to meet with him, the aforementioned TV head apologises to Dev and attempts to make amends, but Dev is unwilling. He comments that “these apologies are phoney”, before stating that he “wrote that email” made his “shitty joke” and how “the only thing that’s changed is that I caught you”. And surely can’t we apply that same logic to Trump also? That was still Trump who made that comment and as much as he says that he is a changed man from that 11 year old video, he was still 59 when he made those comments. How much growing do we really expect somebody of that age to make if they haven’t done so already? I don’t want to be completely closed-minded and suggest that there has never been a person who has changed their viewpoints as dramatically as Trump suggests he has in old age, but I’m pretty sure somebody like Nelson Mandela wasn’t a closet Nazi before he began fighting for the freedom of his country.
So despite the fact that he probably only made it because he was caught out, does Trump’s apology make us forgive and forget? History suggests as such. In 2010 when John Terry was found to be having an affair with a teammates ex, he was stripped of his England captaincy and publicly shamed. He later admitted that he “screwed up” and that he would “face the consequences like a man”. But just over a year later he was reinstalled as England captain, showing that everybody had apparently moved on and that all had been forgiven. Then just one year later, he was stripped of those duties once more as he became embroiled in allegations that he racially abused a fellow player. Was he deserving of forgiveness once more? In the world of celebrity, famous people are afforded much more chances than us normal folk are ever likely to receive, and the fact that Terry was again selected for the England national team after those allegations goes to show that normal rules of first and second chances don’t apply to them. Staying with football, the fact that Lionel Messi was facing sentencing for tax evasion in a country where you can serve 18 months without ever going to jail, are we really surprised that 18 months was exactly what he received? Would a country that benefits from his supreme star power really send one of their main attractions away for over a year and watch their nation’s league dwindle in popularity? Definitely not and why would they?
Looking closer to home, let’s look at one of the highest paid TV presenters on our shores in Jeremy Clarkson, a man who punched a producer on his show because he didn’t provide him with a suitable hot meal. After that well-documented fracas, the curly haired presenter was unceremoniously sacked by the BBC, who were then applauded by many for their moral stance. But just a few months later, the same presenter was given another reprieve by streaming service Amazon, while the BBC retooled their show to a less than stellar reception. Imagine a situation in your day-to-day life where you punched a superior, spat out a limp apology and ended up negotiating a higher paid deal with a rival company. It just wouldn’t happen.
What’s more worrying is that the moral standpoint the beeb took ended up leaving them way behind their competitors, so don’t expect this laudable act to catch on with other companies in the near future. No, instead get used to the rinse and repeat apologies that are becoming more commonplace with each passing year. Despite thinking that he is equal parts lunatic and genius, I would like to end this article with a word on Shia LaBeouf, a man who himself was forced into a public apology not too long ago when an author accused him of plagiarising his work. So rather than give a “phoney apology” himself, he instead plagiarised another’s and left that as his own. From there, he has continued to have a diverse and productive career. Showcasing once and for all that if you’re famous and do something wrong, you just have to say sorry. And even if that sounds too taxing just learn from this current crop and either a) never actually utter the word sorry. Or b) just steal someone else’s apology and pass it off as your own.
Sorry to break it to you Elton, but you were dead wrong about it being hard pal.