Thanks to our friends on The Well for pointing us to this one:

Australian Today Show presenter Karl Stefanovic, engaged in the dippy banter endemic to morning TV hosts, made jokes about “trannies” on the beach in Rio. The next day, he apologized on air, for three minutes. Lo and behold, he did well.

Watch the whole thing at 9news.com.au, but here’s the highlight reel:

“As we all know, I can be a complete tool, right? Well, yesterday I was worse — I was an ignorant tool.

I used a word which I will now say, for the last time ever, and the only reason I’m saying it is if you didn’t see the segment yesterday, you can also learn from my mistake, if you choose to.

By using the word “tranny” I offended an awful lot of beautiful, sensitive people. I honestly didn’t know the negative and deeply hurtful impact that word has, not only on members of the LGBTQI community, but on their family and on their friends.

He went on to say that a friend edified him and told him he’d crossed a line.

I didn’t know that line even existed. Well, I do now. I take this very seriously, because I actually don’t know what it’s like to feel apart from the rest of mainstream society. I don’t know what it’s like to feel you are born in the wrong body, or the extreme courage it takes to accept yourself and live the life you have always wanted to live.

I get it wrong — I probably always will. But as a result of yesterday, I truly have learned a lesson. People — my brothers and sisters in the community who love and respect me — have told me to educate myself. I have started to.

I used the word, a word I’ll never use again. To anyone who found the segment funny, please understand why it was the exact opposite: an ignorant jibe at the expense of a beautiful community already battling against the odds for mainstream acceptance.

Why is this a good apology? Stefanovic stated clearly what he did wrong — he avoided the common weaselly “what happened yesterday” and the passive-voiced “mistakes were made” I-free construction. He named and owned his mistake. He was self-deprecating. He used the acronym “LGBTQI,” which shows that he did his homework — the “I” is for intersex; most people do not know this. Using correct nomenclature, after using such a hurtful wrong name for a group of people, was important. It was right for him to apologize to the extended community — using the inclusive term — of which trans folk are a part. It was right of him to acknowledge his own privilege; he realized that his jokes came from a self-secure place of blithe cluelessness. He said he’s still learning, not that he’s suddenly been edified, which would be bullshit. We’re all learners. And it was right of him to take to task the people who’d thought his jokes had been funny.

I’d like to think he also made a donation to an LGBTQ charity, but in this case I’m glad he didn’t say so on the air. It would have felt manipulative. But Karl, if you haven’t, do it.

Bee tee dubs, you may know Stefanovic as the guy who wore the same suit on air for a year to call attention to the double standard female TV journalists are held to. He proved that while his co-anchor, Lisa Wilkinson, got all kinds of criticism for her outfits, no one ever noticed that he wore the same “cheap Burberry knock-off” day after day after day.

“Women are judged much more harshly and keenly for what they do, what they say and what they wear,” he said afterward. “I’m judged on my interviews, my appalling sense of humour – on how I do my job, basically. Whereas women are quite often judged on what they’re wearing or how their hair is … that’s [what I wanted to test].” (Upon disclosing his experiment — no one ever caught on — he said that Wilkinson and fellow newsreader Sylvia Jeffreys were the only folks who knew about the re- and re- and re-appearance of the suit. “They often remark that it’s getting a bit stinky,” he said. “I’m hoping to get it into the dry cleaners at the end of the year.”)

The upshot: It seems that Stefanovic is a brash Aussie bro who is also capable of sensitivity and change. May all bros be as willing to learn from their mistakes and entitlement. Given the largely furious response to his apology on Today’s Facebook page, I’m not all that hopeful.