My charming brother Andrew pointed me toward an on-air apology by Ann Northrop, the co-host of Gay USA, a weekly cable and online news program about LGBTQ issues. “Succinct, to the point, no excuses,” Andy said, succinctly. Apology experts succinctly agree! Less succinctly, they point out that the incident provides an excellent opportunity to look at a public apology from all sides, since SorryWatch watched the televised apology, then reached out to both Northrop and her apology-recipient to get their private perspectives on the incident.

Here’s the story: On the October 31 episode, Northrop and her co-host Andy Humm discussed a legal case in Kentucky in which two men were accused of beating up another man because he was gay. (Two women were there as well and were accused of lesser charges.) It was the first federal prosecution of a 2009 hate-crimes law applying to criminal acts motivated by the victim’s sexual identity. The defendants were convicted of conspiracy and kidnapping, but acquitted on the hate crimes charge. “Here’s the story,” Northrop says on air (at 28.20 on the recording). “First of all, the attackers said this was a drug deal gone bad. It had nothing to do with his sexual orientation: “He is gay, but we all knew that, and three of the four people who attacked were bisexual!” Northrop laughs. “It’s a unique defense in rural Kentucky, if I may stereotype.”

Behind the scenes, a viewer promptly sent Northrop an email with the subject line, “Greetings from District 12.” (Points for the Hunger Games reference without explicitly saying in the body of the message, “Look how clever I am for making a Hunger Games reference!”) The email read, in part:

Thanks for stereotyping rural Kentucky on your show today. We needed that!  Impressive.  Brave.  It is so hard to find someone to make fun of these days!!! … And by the by, the people who own my mountain and run our economy and education system do not live here; they live there, with you, in the big city.

We all need someone to feel better than, don’t we? So it’s OK. I think it is still legal to stereotype us because we have coal. It helps with the guilt. It makes it easier to take our stuff if we are stupid.

The viewer (who gave permission to share her email, but did not explicitly tell us we could use her name, so we won’t, unless we hear back from her) sent her email at 10:47am on November 5. Less than an hour later, at 11:26am, Northrop wrote back:

You’re absolutely right. It was an idiotic thing to say and I completely regret it. I will apologize at the top of this week’s show.

Northrop opened the next show (starting at 2:18) with, “I heard from a viwer who was not happy. She’s from Kentucky, and she pointed out that I made a stereotypical slur against rural Kentucky and she’s right. It was a lazy, silly, easy thing to do, and I regret it. And I knew at the time that it was coming out of my mouth ‘you’re not saying the right thing!’ But I didn’t take it back then, but I apologize for it now.”

Brava. No excuses (see Chris “I meant something else/I work without a script/I am merely a barometer of the national mood” Matthews), no belabored explanations, no defensiveness. Northrop shows an awareness that she hurt someone’s feelings, calls out the dumbassedness of her statement, and uses the apparently-quite-hard-to-pronounce words “I apologize.” And most importantly, unlike some people, she apologizes privately first, before apologizing publicly. This makes the apology seem less like butt-covering or showboating.

Northrop asked her correspondent if she could share with me their back-and-forth emails, and the correspondent agreed. I asked whether the Kentuckian accepted the apology, and Northrop forwarded her response, with permission.

I am truly grateful and amazed by your apology. That you responded to one person from a down trodden area is so kind.

I also wish Kentucky had a more democratic and Democratic vote. The first would help the last.

 

But the “putting down” of a people does affect the vote.  I offer this explanation not as criticism of you – you have been so gracious.

Most of the media that I listen to and learn from do not understand the Southern Strategy and how well this game has been played.

The woman goes on to point out that political candidates sometimes put on hick pretensions (playing someone “who wanted to have a beer with every hillbilly or redneck — I can use the words, you can’t — who drove a pickup truck”) to great effect. And the media are all too ready to equate Appalachian with stupid, which may in fact actually drive mountain voters into the arms of politicians who preach intolerance. All this despite the region’s proud history in the progressive movement.

Mountain people used to be the people of the UMWA [United Mine Workers of America] and “Which side are you on?”  I used to think the people here were more insightful and tolerant than any other, but Fox News and destruction of education and nasty air and water may have destroyed that at last.

She concludes:

Thanks for sharing your megaphone. We don’t have one. Trees fall. No one hears.

Whew. See how a good apology can not only clear the air, but also educate and promote dialogue? (I, for one, had to google Which Side Are You On.)

PS. A quibble. Andy Humm, do not ruin everything by pre-apologizing (starting at 2:51) for any further screw-ups due to election-related tiredness. Who do you think you are, Chris Matthews?