There’s a haunting account in the psychoanalytic literature of a child who asked for apologies. A 1955 Psychoanalytic Study of the Child article tells of a four-and-a-half-year-old admitted to the New York Neurological Institute. Gaunt and pale, a few weeks earlier she had stopped eating and speaking. She refused to be in bed, huddling in a corner with her face to the wall. “[S]oon she began to wet and soil as she lay mute and unresponsive.”

At the Institute her behavior was similar. Sometimes she muttered or hummed rhythmically.

A few days after admission, she was the subject of a case conference attended by many staff. She was rolled into the room in a crib. She sat staring. She made no response when the examiner put an arm around her or asked her name. After a few minutes, she began muttering. The examiner asked a nurse if she had ever been able to make out any words. The nurse said she’d once thought the child was chanting, “Say you’re sorry.”

Child’s hospital cot, Great Ormand Street & Bristol.

When she said this, the child looked at the nurse, then stared at the examiner. He took her hand, and seriously said, “I am sorry. I am very very sorry.” The child looked at the staff member standing next to him and spoke. Clearly. “Say you’re sorry.”

“I am sorry, too,” he said. She turned to each doctor in the front row and said, “Say you’re sorry.” Each one did. She started asking them their names, told them hers, and happily accepted a piece of candy.

She improved rapidly, and went home.

She was brought to the Institute for weekly therapy sessions. Her initial reaction was “excellent; but she then went successively through a long series of reactivated earlier phobias about contacts and smells, with related compulsive avoidance rituals.” Her mother was also pressured to come for weekly therapy.

The article says that the child’s “crisis” had come after a day when her father, tired and annoyed, lost his temper and spanked her.

The article “does not pretend to tap deep layers of analytical data or insights.” The saying sorry is referred to as a “verbal symbol” from an “unconscious constellation,” whose effect was “instantaneous and almost magical.” They describe the incident as a “demonstration of the appearance and disappearance of a psychotic state in childhood out of a neglected pre-existing neurosis. …that this malignant process was caught in time to be reversible was the happy outcome of a moment of exceptional clinical good fortune…”

Well, then.

New York Neurological Institute. Pretty sure this is the place.

Ten years later, a follow-up article in the American Journal of Psychotherapy, by different authors, offered more explanation. Six years on, the child was hospitalized again. She was violent, set fires, insisted she be called a boy’s name, said she might cut herself, eavesdropped on phone calls, and generally appalled and frightened the family.

After months of therapy, it was at last learned that when the child was very small, shortly after she began to walk, her parents decided the child was too constipated. They didn’t consult a doctor, but began giving her enemas every few days, which the child fought savagely. It took both parents to overpower her. This went on for three years – which seems to take us up to the time the child was first locked up after her “psychotic” crisis. Somehow, the parents never mentioned it to clinicians when asked about toilet training.

The second hospitalization seems to have been set off by an incident when the child’s day camp was scheduled to have a sleepover. Half an hour after arrival, the kid became hysterical and uncontrollable and had to be taken away. Much later, it turned out she’d spotted an enema bag in a counselor’s suitcase.

When the therapists finally learned about what they termed “the battle of the enemas,” they initiated sessions with child and mother and then the whole family over a month’s time. “The patient was allowed to introduce the topic of the enemas at her own time, and did so….” By the end of the month “all of the intense feelings surrounding it had disappeared.”

The authors of the second article go more directly to the subject of the apologies demanded. “Being ‘sorry’ can… be understood to have multiple meanings.” They say she felt sorry for her own behavior. “Moreover, she demanded that her parents should be sorry for deceiving her, surprising her, bribing her, and repeatedly invading the privacy of her body. By extension, she was unable to trust anyone…”

That was a hell of a way to treat a tiny kid. Today it’s called abusive. The articles aren’t fun reading, and the psychoanalytic interpretations might also be… dated. But the opening scene of the story touches the heart. The angry, despairing child was freed from self-destructive misery by a room full of strangers apologizing to her. There is a fleeting magic there.

Some smarty-pants psychologists were hanging out in a Berlin restaurant in the 1920s. They were at the forefront of a new field, and we picture them trying to fit everything they saw into their Big New Vision. Psychic fields! Gestalt theory! Psychological tensions! The experimental method!

Needing coffee and cake to fuel their intellectual rapture, they kept an eye on the waiters. The Zeigarnik Effect was discovered when they noticed what those waiters remembered. The waiters had perfect memories for every single sip and crumb – until the bill was paid. Then, amnesia. If there were two big tables of customers, the waiters knew exactly what had been ordered at the table where the bill hadn’t been paid yet. But they didn’t remember the orders from the table where the bill had been paid.

Why should they? Old news. But it was interesting how total the forgetting was – how did that happen?

Cafe Heinrichhof, Vienna, 1912. Moriz Jung.

One of the psychologists was the young Bluma Zeigarnik, who did her dissertation on the effect the waiters displayed. No, she did not do her dissertation by hanging out in coffee houses. (Nice idea, though – are you a grad student by any chance?)

Zeigarnik gave experimental subjects various tasks like puzzles, math problems, or stringing beads. Some subjects were interrupted in the middle of what they were doing. An hour later she asked people what their task had been. Those who had been interrupted were twice as likely to remember the task as those who were allowed to finish the thing.

She formulated her findings as “Unfinished tasks are remembered approximately twice as well as completed ones.” (Actually, she wrote “Die unerledigten Handlungen werden besser, und zwar durchschnittlich nahezu doppelt so gut behalten wie die erledigten.”)

(Zeigarnik’s biography is tumultuous and tragic. In hindsight, the Zeigarniks’ move to Moscow may have been ill-advised.)

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute Saloon, when they suddenly noticed an odd phenomenon.

While the Zeigarnik Effect is well-known, and often referenced, experimenters sometimes cannot replicate the effect. We suspect this may be because they’re giving people tasks that are just too boring to care about finishing. (Ooh – why not open a fake cafe?)

Here’s how SorryWatch sees the Zeigarnik Effect relating to apologies. If you messed up somehow, and it still weighs on you, or bugs you when you wake up at four a.m., it might be because that mess is unfinished. Still hanging there. An apology can turn that regrettable episode into a finished one, and let you stop wincing at the memory.

It might even stop being a memory. Sumac knows this from past events she wanted to write about for SorryWatch, but can no longer remember well enough. Once she said a stupid thing, meant as a joke (uh huh). It kept bothering her until she invited Nicole to lunch and apologized. It stopped bothering her so completely that now she can’t remember the stupid thing she said. Damn it! That would’ve been perfect for SorryWatch. Probably.

On the one hand, thank you, Doctor Zeigarnik! One less thing to regret during sleepless nights. On the other hand, Bluma – can I please get my memory back?

Being waitstaff: harder than people often realize.

On another occasion, Sumac offended a family member, who continued to resent her insensitivity. Sumac finally realized that she was at fault. She apologized and had her apology accepted. Much later, it occurred to Sumac to write it up for SorryWatch, but she couldn’t remember what she’d done. She asked the family member, and they didn’t remember either.

That’s kind of amazing – a grudge that was forgotten! Eventually, an outside source reminded Sumac of what she’d done, and she was able to write it up.

Maybe we all see this in our lives. We can’t promise you a clear conscience in all domains, but sometimes an apology or two can help with insomnia.

On May 30^th, Iowa senator Joni Ernst held a Town Hall in Butler County. These are usually said to be to listen to the concerns of constituents.

When someone called out “People are going to die!” Ernst replied “Well, we are all going to die.” The audience groaned, and she admonished them, “For Heaven’s sakes, folks.”

Here’s some context. Many of the citizens present were alarmed about the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” barely passed by the House and now before the Senate. The bill is indeed big, and contains many horrible things. Medicaid cuts in it will affect millions of people. Ernst defended the bill and argued that people who would lose Medicaid were illegal immigrants. She didn’t say that all of them were. Good, because that’s not true. One in 5 Iowans get Medicaid.

Along with the bill’s proposed defunding of Planned Parenthood, one particular effect would be no coverage for prenatal care, childbirth, and postnatal care. Oh, and the closing of rural hospitals.

So yes, cuts anything like the ones proposed will result in many deaths. Rural people, poor people, old people, baby people, and more.

You want medical care? Seriously? Photo: Gage Skidmore.

When Ernst’s “We are all going to die” remark went public, there was a lot of anger about it. Enough that she apparently felt she should apologize. Or was advised to apologize.

As we often say, a bad apology can make things worse. This was one of those cases.

She filmed it in a graveyard.

Hello, everyone.

I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely apologize for a statement that I made yesterday at my Town Hall.

See, I was in the process of answering a question that had been asked by an audience member when

a woman who was extremely distraught screamed out from the back corner of the auditorium, “People are going to die!”

And I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that yes, we are all going to perish from this earth.

So, I apologize.

And I’m really really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the Tooth Fairy as well. But for those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

She forgot to say that in hell, they want ice water.

Terrible apology! Yes, she uses the word “apologize.” It was not sincere, but still, she said it. And she said what the action was that she was apologizing for. But then she went off the rails in the part about acknowledging the impact.

There’s a passing attack on the audience member (“extremely distraught” “screamed”). Then a sneering attack on everyone present who shared that concern, in which she pretends they don’t know that people die. (“I made an incorrect assumption”) This of course ignores the obvious fact that a responsible government works to ensure that people don’t die sooner than they must, and don’t die in untreated physical misery.

To add insult she implies that anyone concerned not only doesn’t know about death but also believes in the Tooth Fairy.

Have you heard the great news about the Tooth Fairy? Photo by Gage Skidmore at the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

Strangely, she then tries to manifest lovingkindness by advising listeners to find Jesus. This is one of the weirder evangelical gestures we’ve seen. “Hey stupid, find Christ!”

She’s not sorry, she doesn’t think she was wrong, she thinks her constituents are dumb (not because they don’t know about death, but because they think she’s wrong not to care about others), and she’s only pretending to do religious outreach.

This is called doubling down. It’s not a persuasive technique, but it may amuse her handlers in the administration.

Adults know all of us will die eventually. But that doesn’t mean we don’t care how soon we die. It doesn’t mean we don’t want medical care. Maybe even in a hospital. We also care about the health of our family and friends.

“We are all going to die” is not about Ernst accepting her own mortality. It’s about her lack of interest in other people’s mortality. A bad look in a public servant.

Hard-fought tennis game at the Open de Rouen. French player Loïs Boisson dominating. British player Harriet Dart struggling. As they changed ends, Dart spoke to the umpire. “Can you tell her to use deodorant because she smells really bad?”

This was picked up by a microphone so lots of people got to hear it, though probably not Boisson, who continued to trounce Dart. 6-0, 6-3. Game over.

Later, Dart posted on Instagram, “Hey everyone, I want to apologise for what I said on court today, it was a heat-of-the-moment comment that I truly regret. That’s not how I want to carry myself, and I take full responsibility. I have a lot of respect for Lois and how she competed today. I’ll learn from this and move forward.”

Harriet Dart, Transylvania Open, 2024. (c) Nuta Lucian

Good or bad apology?

It’s probably true that it was heat-of-the-moment stupidity, rather than some kind of diabolical middle-school strategy. Umpires don’t pass messages between players. Opposing tennis players aren’t in sniffing range of each other.

But if Dart genuinely wants to take responsibility, she should apologize directly to Boisson, and not only to the public “everyone” who heard this silliness. And then, as she said, learn from this. And only then, “move forward.”

Boisson did hear about it, after all, and posted a photo of herself into which a container of deodorant had been Photoshopped, captioned “@dove apparently need a collab”

Amusing, and de-escalating. Well played.

Another deodorant brand hopped into the conversation, saying their product is better than Dove’s.

Battle of the brands? That’s where things could get underhanded.

Hat tip to our Tennis Correspondent, Wendy G.

The NYPD sent news organizations a statement of correction and apology. They don’t seem to have put it on their website. The most complete version we could find appeared in the New York CaribNews.

In reference to a fatal shooting at the 2024 West Indian American Day Parade in Brooklyn, it says:

The N.Y.P.D. identified a person of interest who was on the scene before, during and after the incident, which is supported by video evidence and witness accounts.

Social media posts in September mistakenly stated that he was wanted for the fatal shooting.

The N.Y.P.D. should have immediately corrected this misstatement.

We apologize for the error and will continue to seek justice for the victims of this shooting.

That statement was sent out on February 9, 2025. The shooting, which killed one person and injured four others, happened on September 2, 2024, so this apology comes 5 months afterward.

Oh, is that because they were still investigating that person of interest as the possible shooter? Well, no.

A “person of interest” might be a suspect, or they might be a witness. You, for example, or SorryWatch, if we happened to be at a marvelous parade looking around for some fritters, doubles, or jerk chicken.

Dancing. 2010 Parade.

This “person of interest” was 16-year-old Camden Lee, who did not shoot anybody. He went to the parade after football practice. One of the friends he was standing with was shot in the shoulder. But the NYPD put a “crisp” photo of Lee on social media saying he had fired a gun and was “wanted for the fatal shooting.”

When Lee saw the photo with its false accusation, he was shocked. He told the Associated Press, “I see the NYPD logo. I see me. I see ‘suspect wanted for murder. I couldn’t believe what was happening. Then everything went blurry.”

Lee and his mother got a lawyer and they met with the police. They had to wait until the following week for the meeting. The police agreed that he was not a suspect. “They conceded they got it wrong,” said attorney Kenneth Montgomery. NOT A SUSPECT. NOT. NOT WANTED FOR THE SHOOTING. INNOCENT. During the time the family were waiting to meet with the police, the WANTED image was going out to TV and other media outlets.

The NYPD took the WANTED picture down from their Instagram and X accounts, but did not go so far as to say that Lee was not a suspect.

And after the photo with the accusation was taken down, amateur sleuths kept reposting it.

Crisp.

And then, according to a CBS interview with Lee’s mother, the NYPD “mistakenly” reposted it in December.

Lee’s mother was frightened for his life. Friends of the person who was killed, or one of the ones who was injured, might come after Lee. Death threats were coming in. Death threats were coming in because of police actions. And the police said they suspected gang involvement. The family left town for several weeks, meaning Lee missed school.

Finally, after 5 months, they issued that terrible apology. Which shows why explanation is sometimes an important part of a good apology.

Marching band, 2008 Brooklyn West-Indian American Carnival.

What happened? Why did the NYPD leave the picture up for so long? Why did it take them 5 months to admit Lee wasn’t really a suspect? Why didn’t they “immediately [correct] this misstatement”?

We can imagine a lot of reasons. Maybe they hoped that Lee and a bunch of football pals would decide to clear his name and find the real killer for them. Unlikely – are we in the movies? Maybe they hoped someone would kill him to avenge the person who was shot, Denzel Chan, and then they could say “Must’ve been him after all, we were right all along.” That could be a little more likely. Maybe they had no interest in doing right by citizens who happen to be of West Indian descent. Also possible. Maybe the job of fixing the information fell between the cracks – everyone thought it was someone else’s job. Maybe it isn’t anyone’s job, because the NYPD isn’t really focused on correcting misinformation. Or maybe the person whose job it was left, and the position hasn’t been filled. Or, you know how they say not to ascribe anything to malice that can as easily be ascribed to incompetence? Maybe nobody knew how to do it and nobody cared enough to learn

Whatever it was, it should be fixed. But the fixes for these different possibilities are all different, and if we don’t know how it happened, we don’t know what fix to demand.

Happens? Happens to be wrong.

In the summer of 2023, a fervent advocate for mistreated dogs got emotional on social media about a case in Fresno that was frustrating her.

In the process of trying to arouse outrage, she made a suggestion which turned out to be false. Wrong. A dangerous lie.

In an online video she suggested that a Thai restaurant next door to the place where a dog was tied up might be killing dogs and serving their meat. “Something needs to be investigated, because yeah now – heartbreaking as it is, it makes more sense that they are eating the meat and selling the meat – it is just – Oh my God, I can’t even…” She posted the address. She asked people to go there and check on the dog. She said the name of the restaurant. (“‘Thai’… I don’t know how to say that word. It’s connected to the house…. I think they’re the same owner.”) The video spread widely.

Wrong. She was completely wrong. The restaurant had nothing to do with the place next door. No one was selling dog meat. No one was eating dogs. No one was killing dogs.

A dog it is okay to eat, if you like cake.

As for the dog whose case had caught her attention, the Fresno police investigated and found the dog was not being abused, and also that it had since been returned to its original owner. They told her to stay away from the location or be charged with harassment. She posted, “I’m not staying away. I am gonna keep going… Something needs to be done, and I guess – breaking the law per se – by [air quotes] harassing, if that’s what they call it, it’s going to get everyone’s attention, so be it. And I think we should all do the same.”

The false accusation had caught the attention of people who were so angry at the idea of dogs being eaten that they threatened people at the restaurant. WHERE DOGS WERE NOT BEING EATEN. NO ONE WAS EATING DOGS. Often they tied the false idea of dog-eating to racist ideas about people from Thailand. They posted vicious fake reviews. Mostly they called or emailed to make threats but sometime they hung around the outside of the restaurant.

The owner, David Rasavong, was especially bothered by an elderly woman caller who screamed at him and then said. “Go back to the country you came from, you dog-eating motherfucker.” Even more, he was afraid for his parents, elderly immigrants who had been helping him in the restaurant.

He replied to all public comments he could find. He posted a video assuring people that the restaurant had nothing to do with the original dog complaint, and OF COURSE WE DON’T SERVE DOG MEAT, but it didn’t help. Because the racist fury continued, he closed the restaurant. Permanently.

More cake.

After a few days, the dog-welfare advocate posted on social media, asking people to leave the restaurant and its owner alone. She posted denying that she was racist. Because while she had mobilized people to harass the restaurant, other people were harassing her for that. They attacked her on social media, reposted her videos, and put up insulting fake profiles of her.

She was invited on local TV. She defended her actions. “I never once reached out to that restaurant and posted anything negative or not even… on Yelp.” The interviewer pointed out that she had posted on Facebook that she believed the restaurant was selling dog meat.

“At the beginning, yes. A lot of people believed that. A lot of people thought that they [the two buildings] were related and that they were connected together. Yes, a lot of people they believe that,” said the dog-welfare advocate. Then she backtracked, and said she never said that. “Now we’re demanding an investigation,” she said. “We’re demanding to make sure that the dogs are okay and it’s falling on deaf ears…” (It’s not clear how the one dog became “dogs.”)

She was upset that people said her remarks were racist, in connecting the idea of a Thai restaurant and the idea that people there might be serving dog meat. “Not once have I mentioned Asians in my videos, not once have I talked about a race…” She was not asked if she would have jumped to the same conclusion about an American-style restaurant.

She did apologize. In a video she said, “The situation got out of hand. I’d like to apologize. This is not the person I am. …It’s been a hard situation to handle…. I am sorry that David [the restaurant owner] and his family are going through this. There’s no justification for the hate that this has spit out. …It was not my intention for it to go this way.”

That’s a terrible apology. She doesn’t say what she did, and she doesn’t take responsibility. She doesn’t take the chance to say IT WASN’T TRUE. THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN. She’s sorry for herself.

On another occasion, she posted, “You accuse me of hate and what are you doing to me? …How hypocritical is that?”

This dog? Also a cake.

It’s a story about how a false racist rumor destroyed a small business. SorryWatch didn’t post about it when it happened. The accuser did not seem to be in good shape. It was too late to go to the restaurant. But recently the incident came to mind again, and we looked at more recent news stories, and found a [happy outcome].

During the dark times after the accusation (which was FALSE, please remember), owner David Rasavong felt isolated. He says even some reporters on the story assumed the accusation was true.

However, most people didn’t fall for the ridiculous story, and many wanted to support the family and their business. A property manager at a shopping center offered to let Rasavong take over a location vacated by another restaurant. A designer, an interior designer, and a painter donated their services. In late fall of 2023 the new restaurant, Love & Thai, opened to great acclaim. People especially praise the crispy pork belly.

We’re posting about this now because of a recent outcropping of vicious accusations that People from Other Places are eating dogs and cats. Accusations that are shutting schools, triggering death threats, and making innocent people live in fear. This is timeless slander to hurl at people in other groups. Not just Haitians, as in this recent calumny. Not just Thais or people from other Asian countries. Not just immigrants, either. Sumac remembers the late comedian Charlie Hill (Oneida Nation of Wisconsin) describing his surprise when he went to public school with White kids who insisted that his family ate dogs.

People with troubled minds sometimes find satisfaction in spreading this rumor – eating pets is horrible! People who eat pets are horrible! Let’s speak out against them! For the sake of the animals, let’s get up a mob!

We’d like to think that such accusations have a short life, that the destruction they cause will end soon. We must hope.

We won’t go into the entire remarkable career of Lieutenant Colonel Charity Adams Earley with the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), but will look at an incident in 1946, and what followed.

Major Adams, as she was then, was commanding officer of the 6888th Battalion. The battalion was stationed in Birmingham UK, and was charged with getting mail to US troops in the European Theater of Operations (ETO), all seven million of them. More than 7,500 of those troops were named “Robert Smith.” Yeah.

Captain Charity Adams drilling her company at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, May 1943.

There was a huge backlog – 17 million pieces of mail – when the Six Triple Eight arrived in England, and they were given six months to clear it up. It took them only three months, in part because Major Adams had the battalion working in three shifts around the clock. They created their own filing system for the task. “No Mail, Low Morale,” was their motto.

Captain Robert Smith, Bengal Engineers. Yes, I’m Robert Smith, and I’m expecting a letter from home. It might be addressed to “Bobs.”

The Six Triple Eight was composed largely of Black women and this was such a curiosity then that “we were inspected, visited, greeted, checked out, congratulated, called upon, supervised, and reviewed by every officer of any rank in the United Kingdom who could come up with an excuse to come to Birmingham,” Adams wrote in her book One Woman’s Army: A Black Officer Remembers the WAC. “They wanted to see for themselves.”

Actually, I’m Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith. Not Robert Smith. Not even a postcard?

One such officer was a White general whom Adams does not name. Let’s call him General Robert Smith. (As far as we know, he never sang “Boys Don’t Cry.”) He was taken on a tour of the facilities, given lunch, and then presented with all the troops available for inspection – a third of the total number.

“Adams, where are the other personnel of this unit? It certainly does not look like a battalion to me.”

“Yes, Sir, but we work three eight-hour shifts, so some of the women are working.” Another third were sleeping, she explained.

“I wanted to review your troops. That means all of them.”

“But, Sir, our instructions were – ”

“I’ll tell you what I am going to do, Major Adams. I’m going to send a white first lieutenant down here to show you how to run this unit.” This was said in a voice loud enough to be heard by all present.

Adams wrote that it took her a fraction of a second to realize that “I would no longer be able to command if I did not make the proper response to the general.” She replied promptly.

“Over my dead body, Sir.”

“He sputtered and finally said, ‘You’ll hear from me, Adams.’ He saluted to indicate my dismissal from his presence and walked to his limousine. As I watched the general’s limousine slowly disappear from view, it dawned on me that I was in trouble.”

Indeed, that evening Adams and her immediate staff got a call from someone on General Smith’s staff warning that he’d been asked to draw up court-martial charges against Adams.

Any mail for me? I’m Robert Smith. They call me “The Windy City Kid.”

“After much deliberation someone, probably Sergeant Jones, who handled the filing, remembered some letters from SHAEF [Supreme Headquarters American Expeditionary Forces] that cautioned unit commanders about using language that stressed racial segregation so that our allies would not suspect disharmony among American troops…. My own ‘war council’ helped me to decide to put these letters to an unintended use. I would draw up court-martial charges against the general on the grounds that he had disobeyed a directive from SHAEF Headquarters. That was stretching a memorandum into a directive, but I had nothing to lose and everything to gain.”

After three days, Adams got word that General Smith was dropping his charges on the grounds that because Adams was the highest-ranking WAC officer in the ETO, and the court-martial had to heard by senior officers, it would be too expensive to fly them to Europe for the purpose. Accordingly, Adams dropped her plans to court-martial the general.

Adams, much relieved, thought she’d never have to see Smith again. Not so fast. Soon the Six Triple Eight was sent to France – and General Smith was in their line of command. Within days, Smith came to visit the battalion. “His manner was altogether different on this visit. His main concern was that we keep up the good work we had done in the United Kingdom. He was very pleasant, and you can be assured that I was. It was as if we had never met before that day.”

One day he appeared again. “[H]e showed up unannounced at the 6888th to say good-bye to me. I could not believe what he had to say.

“‘Adams, I’ve received my orders to return to the States. Otherwise, I would not be here. It’s not easy for me to say what I’ve come to say. Working with you has been quite an education for me, especially about Negroes.’ He had finally learned how to pronounce the word. I waited as he continued. ‘The only Negroes I have ever known personally were those who were in the servant capacity or my subordinates in the Army. It’s been a long time since anyone challenged me, black or white, but you took me on. You outsmarted me and I am proud that I know you. I would not have told you this if I thought I would ever see you again.’

“And I never did see him again.”

Was that an apology? Was it a good one?

We say this is an example of an apology that, although it does not follow our steps – or, really, anyone’s steps – to a good apology, still shows serious good intent.

He does NOT say “sorry” or “apologize,” but there’s no doubt that he’s sorry and is going out of his way to let Adams know. He is not specific about what he did, but he is specific about why he thought and acted as he did. He humbles himself by saying he was outsmarted, and shows her respect by saying he’s proud to know her.

The bizarre part is “I would not have told you this if I thought I would ever see you again.” In other words, he doesn’t feel like he can face anyone he’s apologized to. He feels too humiliated.

Okay. One: He was raised wrong. Two: He’d have apologized even better if he read SorryWatch. Three: He was probably wrong about not being able to face anyone he’d apologized to, because most people, like us, would think better of him after that. And his conscience would be clear.

“Regrettably, in trying to thwart a well-documented Armenian fraud ring operating in certain parts of California, a few employees took impermissible actions. While we prioritize protecting our bank and our customers from fraud, it is unacceptable to base credit decisions on national origin.”

That’s from a statement sent to CNN signed by a spokesperson for Citi (aka Citigroup).

Citi also stated “We sincerely apologize to any applicant who was evaluated unfairly. Following an internal investigation, we have taken appropriate actions with those directly involved in this matter, and we promptly put in place measures to prevent any recurrence of such conduct.”

Wait up, wait up. Armenian fraud ring? It’s a thing. We’ll get to it.

How does SorryWatch rate Citi’s apology? Eh. Not good. It works to minimize what happened. “Regrettably… a few employees… took impermissible actions.” Impermissible actions which broke the law. You know, CRIMES. But only a few employees!

It does use the word “apologize,” so points for that. Is it specific about what they did? Not much. Clearly they did base credit decisions on national origin, apparently on whether they thought you were Armenian. Which they decided by the sophisticated method of screening for names ending with “ian” or “yan.” What sort of credit decisions? They don’t specify.

Yeah, sneaky expression and her name ends with “ian.”

They do not address the impact of those credit decisions.

Like their impact on real estate agent Mary Smbatian. Smbatian told the Washington Post, “I had so much trust in Citibank. And then one day, just like, out of the blue, they just basically [upended] my life completely.” Citi closed her and her husband’s personal, credit and business accounts, without explanation. Accounts they’d had for nearly two decades. Wham! They were locked out for 30 days. Checks sent to them were turned away. Their credit was damaged. They lost spending points and rewards. Each thought the other one must have made some mistake that caused the bank actions. (Strife!) Smbatian and her husband opened new accounts at four different banks. Only later did they learn this happened because of their Armenian surnames. They are now part of a class-action lawsuit.

The reason these apology statements were made is that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) heard about this, investigated, and brought a case against Citi under the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. They found that Citi did this at least from 2015 to 2021, affecting hundreds of people. Those “few” employees called Armenians “bad guys” or, as CFPB head Rohit Chopra put it, “stereotyped Armenians as prone to crime and fraud.” Citi “illegally fabricated documents to cover up its discrimination.” Managers told employees not to “discuss it in writing or on recorded phone lines.” But some did, as in one employee asking for help with excuses to refuse credit. “It’s been a while since I declined for possible credit abuse/YAN — gimme some reasons I can use.”

The bank must pay $25.9 million – $1.4 million to people they discriminated against, and $24.5 million as a penalty. That amount was called “meaningless to Citi” by Dennis Kelleher of a financial reform advocacy group, Better Markets, who said it was about .1% of Citi’s revenue for one quarter. “Individual bankers, including executives and supervisors, must be personally punished with meaningful fines and barred from working in the industry.”At a December 2023 hearing of the Senate Banking Committee, the bank’s CEO Jane Fraser said Citi is “deeply sorry” and repeated that it was a “small number of employees” who did the forbidden things. (How many covered it up? Surely a tiny eensy-beensy number, so minute as to be undetectable.)

Back to rating the apology: how does “in trying to thwart a well-documented Armenian fraud ring…, a few employees took impermissible actions… we prioritize protecting our bank and our customers from fraud” stack up on “no excuses, explanation only if needed” scale?

Not that great. So their credit department wasn’t operating from a simple “we don’t like Armenians, no credit for them” rubric, but instead the highly nuanced “we heard some fraudsters were Armenian therefore no Armenians get credit and if we gave them credit before we take it away”? Not better.

She could borrow a bunch of money and flee the country, right?

We’re really unhappy with their “say why it won’t happen again” step. Saying ‘hardly any of us did those bad things’ isn’t persuasive, especially without more facts. What were the job titles of those “few employees”? Did this start with one person with authority over many others? Two people? One department? Three?

And why? What was their incentive? According to testimony, there were efforts to hide this discrimination from higher-ups by avoiding putting things in email, so why did they do it? Were they getting rewarded for identifying “credit risks”? After Wells Fargo]was discovered opening large numbers of unwanted accounts for customers, the bank said they had, and would change, a system that set goals for branch managers to open accounts and rewarded them for hitting those goals. Was there – is there – a system at Citi with perverse goals? (Because it’s perverse for a bank to deny credit to customers with good credit histories.)

“[W]e promptly put in place measures to prevent any recurrence of such conduct”? WHAT MEASURES ARE THOSE? Did Citi tell employees, ‘leave Armenians alone’? Or did they tell employees, “Really, really, don’t put it in email, no really”? Did they say “there is no quota for labeling people credit risks and you will not be rewarded for doing so”? Did they order a sensitivity training? If so, who got the training? Lowly minions, or the perfectly evolved executives too? Basically, if your “measures to prevent” are secret, we can’t trust them.

Okay, so what about this “well-documented Armenian fraud ring”? This apparently refers to the “Armenian Power” gang. It’s a criminal gang, started among immigrant Armenians, which peaked in the 1990s. In 2011 a gigantic law-enforcement sweep arrested nearly 100 people, on charges including kidnapping, fraud, extortion, identity theft, loansharking, robbery, witness intimidation, drug trafficking, marijuana cultivation, bringing narcotics into prison, and oh yeah murder.

A witness could EASILY be intimidated by her.

Content creators leapt on the idea, inserting Armenian gangs into Grand Theft Auto V, House of Cards, Message from the King, NCIS Los Angeles, Ray Donovan, and The Shield. Also, apparently, into the nightmares of the credit department at Citibank in the Los Angeles area. Many Armenians live in the area, (particularly Glendale, East Hollywood, and Central LA).

Maybe 80,000 Armenians and Armenian Americans live in Glendale alone. Several hundred thousand live in Southern California. Obviously most are not members of Armenian Power (which includes non-Armenians). So it’s not very likely that someone with an Armenian last name is a member of Armenian Power. 100 gang members is .05% of 200,000 people. To find them, you might want to actually look at their actual *&^+@$# credit history, right? Actually?

It would be nice to think bankers could do the math

Oh, and you know what? We don’t feel like we can kick Citigroup around without mentioning their enthusiastic financing of new fossil fuel projects. That’s something that’s going to hurt everyone – you, us, notable Armenian Kim Kardashian. Even Citi employees and the members of Armenian Power.

New Zealand investigative journalist Nicky Hager writes powerful books on subjects like intelligence networks, politics, and environmental issues. Sometimes people – powerful people at powerful institutions – get SO ANGRY about his books they commit illegal acts against him. Then he sues them. How dare he?!

We’re now reading Hager’s 1999 Secrets and Lies: The Anatomy of an Anti-Environmental PR Campaign, co-authored with Bob Burton. It documents a secret campaign, carried on by international public relations group Shandwick/Weber Shandwick Worldwide, against environmental groups like Native Forest Action. (The campaign included greenwashing, insertion of pro-logging material into school curricula, getting magazine articles canceled, tearing down posters, SLAPP lawsuits…). Anger at the book’s revelations seems to have contributed to the 2000 Forests Act, banning the logging of publicly-owned native forests.

Kids! This is our native heritage! Let’s chop it down and ship it overseas!

In 2014 Hager published Dirty Politics: how attack politics is poisoning New Zealand’s political environment. According to the New Zealand Herald, it “alleged the office of former Prime Minister Sir John Key ran a dirty tricks campaign through [a] right-wing blogger.” Part of the material he used came from a leak of hacked documents. The police told a judge they needed warrants because this Nicky Hager guy was suspected of fraud, without mentioning that Hager was a journalist. They got the warrants and searched Hager’s house for 10 hours, taking computers and documents. They searched his bank records. They searched airline records of his travels. They found nothing.

Hager sued, received “substantial” damages, and got an apology from the police, in which they admitted they lied when they said he was a fraud suspect, that they didn’t tell the judge he was a journalist, and that the search warrant was “overly broad.”

Now, back in 2011, Hager published Other People’s Wars, which looked into New Zealand’s participation in the “War on Terror” in Afghanistan and Iraq. We venture to say he is critical of some government actions and the big puffer coat of secrecy and deception with which they were hidden from the public. Hager used leaked military information for the book. Who leaked it to him? He didn’t say.

Kiwis are very good at investigating.

Well! New Zealand’s Security Intelligence Service (SIS) took a hostile view of this. They suspected that a certain member of the NZ Defence Force had given Hager information for the book. Illegally. Hoping to prove this, they seized two months of Hager’s phone records. Illegally. Poked into his airline flight records too.

Those phone records showed no link between Hager and the person the SIS suspected. Nothing from the airlines. (Where the heck do they think he is flying, anyway? What would that even prove?)

Hager sued the SIS over this in 2012. It took TEN YEARS, but ultimately he got a settlement, the payment of his legal fees, and an apology from the SIS. The Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, Madeleine Laracy, ruled that the SIS used “intrusive investigatory powers” without justification. “I have been unable to find that the [SIS] showed the kind of caution I consider proper, for an intelligence agency in a free and democratic society, about launching any investigation into a journalist’s sources.”

Rebecca Kitteridge, the SIS Director-General, was the one who apologized to Hager. In a statement, Kitteridge said the SIS had apologized to Hager for its failings, and any impact and distress it caused, adding, “I reiterate that apology to Mr Hager publicly.”

Argh. First of all, saying that you apologized is not the same as apologizing. Maybe the earlier apology was a good one, but it doesn’t look likely. Hager said, and we agree, “This issue needs to be fixed for the future. I want the SIS to introduce clear policies that will prevent them from targeting media organizations and journalists in this way again.”

Exactly! In general, people getting apologies for having been harmed want to hear that steps are being taken to make sure it doesn’t happen again. This is huge in medical apologies – it’s bad enough they amputated the wrong finger, but how do they plan to make sure they don’t keep on lopping off people’s fingers randomly? As we describe in our book, this is a vital part of medical apologies that ward off lawsuits.

It’s good the SIS apologized, but to be sure it’s not a “we’re sorry WE GOT CAUGHT” apology, instead of a “we’re sorry WE DID A BAD THING” apology, we need to hear that they’ve made appropriate changes.

We worry that next time the police or the SIS fly off the handle about one of Nicky Hager’s infuriatingly revealing books, they’ll just try to be sneakier. What’s to stop them? There’s nothing in the apology about that…

In New Zealand they can keep a secret.

(Reviving a post from 2012, because not getting an apology doesn’t make feelings go away.)

The Events:

It would be nice if we were all familiar with the Great Upheaval/Grand Dérangement – the forcible exile of the Acadians from the Maritime Provinces of Canada. But Americans, for example, typically learn little Canadian history. And these days, we hardly read any Longfellow.

Beginning in 1755, the Acadians were harshly deported to British colonies in America, to England, or to France. 11,500 Acadian refugees were scattered, typically to places which did not welcome destitute foreigners. Thousands died. Families were broken apart. Longfellow wrote an epic poem about the (fictional) Evangeline, deported separately from her fiance, Gabriel. She spends years searching the places of Acadian exile, always a step or two behind Gabriel. They only meet again when he is an old man dying in a Philadelphia poorhouse.

Evangeline Discovering Her Affianced in the Hospital. Painting by Samuel Richards, photographed by Quick Fix/Johnny Action.

Many people call this ethnic cleansing. (Others say it was just nasty deporting.) Why did the British do it? England and France were fighting and one theater of war was the North American colonies. You might know this as the French and Indian War, or the Guerre de la Conquête. The Acadians lived in English territory, but spoke French – probably acted French – and had refused to swear to fight for the Crown. “[W]e will take up arms neither against his Britannic Majesty, nor against France…” Pacifists?! But there were also some anti-British rebels, so the British decided to deport everybody.

The idea may have been suggested by Americans. The governor of Massachusetts was a booster and New Englanders settled the land the Acadians lost.

Acadian descendants haven’t forgotten. In 1990, Warren Perrin, a lawyer in Louisiana, filed a symbolic lawsuit asking for an apology for the Expulsion. He sent it to Queen Elizabeth and then-prime minster Margaret Thatcher.

The Apology:

Somewhat to the Acadians’ surprise, Britain responded, saying they’d think about it.

In 2003, they coughed up a Royal Proclamation, which we will abridge slightly. It’s from “Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom, Canada and her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith.”

Whereas the Acadian people, through the vitality of their community, have made a remarkable contribution to Canadian society for almost 400 years;

Whereas on July 28, 1755, the Crown, in the course of administering the affairs of the British colony of Nova Scotia, made the decision to deport the Acadian people;

Whereas the deportation of the Acadian people, commonly known as the Great Upheaval, continued until 1763 and had tragic consequences, including the deaths of many thousands of Acadians – from disease, in shipwrecks, in their places of refuge and in prison camps in Nova Scotia and England as well as in the British colonies in America;

Whereas We acknowledge these historical facts and the trials and suffering experienced by the Acadian people during the Great Upheaval;

Whereas We hope that the Acadian people can turn the page on this dark chapter of their history;
…

Whereas We, in Our role as Queen of Canada, exercise the executive power by and under the Constitution of Canada;
Whereas this Our present Proclamation does not, under any circumstances, constitute a recognition of legal or financial responsibility by the Crown in right of Canada and of the provinces and is not, under any circumstances, a recognition of, and does not have any effect upon, any right or obligation of any person or group of persons;
…
Now Know You that We, by and with the advice of Our Privy Council for Canada, do by this Our Proclamation, effective on September 5, 2004, designate July 28 of every year as “A Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval”, commencing on July 28, 2005.

Of All Which Our Loving Subjects and all others whom these Presents may concern are hereby required to take notice and to govern themselves accordingly.

Sorrywatch Analysis:

That’s not an apology. It acknowledges what happened and who did it, but then hopes “the Acadian people can turn the page.” Here’s a Day – don’t expect time off. Hope you can turn the page! It’s not good to be bitter! Resentment gives you wrinkles! Why let us live rent-free in your head? We’ve moved on, and so should you. Just saying.

Nothing about whether it was a good or bad idea, nothing about apologize/sorry/error. Nothing about whether they’d do it again.

Did the Acadian descendants point this out? Did they say ‘Hey, we asked for an apology!’ Somebody must have, but for the most part they simply declared it an apology.

A piece by Perrin himself, for the Acadian Museum, is titled “The Queen’s Royal Proclamation: An Apology for the Acadian Deportation.” An “apology.”

Maybe sometimes an apology would be so nice to get that you act as if you got one. You do a victory dance.

But Perrin doesn’t actually seem to be over it. Perrin’s part of the Gulf Oil Disaster Recovery Group litigating against British Petroleum over the Deepwater Horizon spill. That’s a logical thing for a Louisiana lawyer to be involved in.

Here’s something Perrin said in a video. “As soon as the BP spill took place, it occurred to me that it was a remarkable coincidence that it was the British government, ordered by the British Crown, that had deported the Acadians… in 1750.” Perrin said. “So here we fast-forward to April 20^th, 2010, and we have a flourishing Cajun culture in South Louisiana….”

Of a BP commercial pledging to ‘make it right’ Perrin says, “we certainly do not want to see another 300 years go by before this British Petroleum Corporation located in London protects our wetlands and protects our way of life because we certainly don’t want to have another Grand Dérangement or Great Upheaval of our people again at the hands of the British.”

Gee, Britain, I don’t think he trusts you. And after you apologized! Well, at least after you issued a proclamation.

Don’t trust us either! McCarthy and Ingall have documented ties to New England. As the truth about Yankee complicity in the Great Expulsion comes out, maybe we’re really worried that the Acadians will be coming after us. — Sumac