And one time a candy company nailed it!

A year-end roundup is mandatory, right? So let’s dive right in.

1. Anheuser-Busch CEO feels that transphobia is all-American!

Bud Light, a beer that tastes like why wouldn’t you just drink water, had been performing poorly for years when the company reached out to transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney on Instagram. Alissa Heinerscheid, the company’s vice president of marketing (NOT FOR LONG!), said she wanted to reverse the company’s marketplace slide. “I had a really clear job to do when I took over Bud Light, and it was ‘This brand is in decline, it’s been in a decline for a really long time, and if we do not attract young drinkers to come and drink this brand, there will be no future for Bud Light.’” She added, “Bud Light had been kind of a brand of fratty, out-of-touch humor, and it was really important that we had another approach.” So, the brand, which generally goes undrunk by millennial women who, when they want a low-calorie beverage that tastes like toxic air, drink White Claw, did an Instagram video with Mulvaney. Conservatives went as wild as a cop smashing a car into a gay bar. Kid Rock, wearing a MAGA hat, shot up a case of Bud Light with a semiautomatic rifle, then told the camera, “Fuck Bud Light and Fuck Anheuser-Busch.” Mulvaney received rape threats, death threats, stalkers, and public abuse.

The company’s CEO, Brendan Whitworth, issued a weird statement that was widely labeled an apology.

“As the CEO of a company founded in America’s heartland more than 165 years ago, I am responsible for ensuring every consumer feels proud of the beer we brew. We’re honored to be part of the fabric of this country. Anheuser-Busch employs more than 18,000 people and our independent distributors employ an additional 47,000 valued colleagues. We have thousands of partners, millions of fans and a proud history supporting our communities, military, first responders, sports fans and hard-working Americans everywhere. We never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people. We are in the business of bringing people together over a beer. My time serving this country taught me the importance of accountability and the values upon which America was founded: freedom, hard work and respect for one another. As CEO of Anheuser-Busch, I am focused on building and protecting our remarkable history and heritage. I care deeply about this country, this company, our brands and our partners. I spend much of my time traveling across America, listening to and learning from our customers, distributors and others. Moving forward, I will continue to work tirelessly to bring great beers to consumers.”

This says nothing. Despite the random use of the word “accountability,” it takes no stand at all, except for “Bad publicity is bad” and “Yay, America.” It doesn’t apologize to the conservative men who were furious that the brand worked with a trans woman. It doesn’t apologize to regular folks upset by the company’s refusal to acknowledge the transphobia unleashed by a single Instagram video. It doesn’t apologize to the universe for making a product so undrinkable that, if were Snarly trapped on a desert island with only a case of Bud Light and her own urine, who knows what might happen. And most importantly, it doesn’t apologize to Mulvaney. She never heard from the company again.

@dylanmulvaneyTrans people like beer too. 🏳️‍⚧️🍻♬ original sound – Dylan Mulvaney

Heinerscheid, the VP of marketing, also received threats. She and Daniel Blake, Anheuser-Busch’s senior VP of marketing for Budweiser, were both put on leave. Today, he still has his job; she does not. (Shocker.) As for Kid Rock, with his big compensatory pew-pew machine, he was selling Bud Light at his Nashville restaurant by July. He was photographed drinking Bud Light at a country-rap concert in August. And this month, he said he’d forgiven the brand. “Do I want to hold their head under water and drown them because they made a mistake?” he asked, hopefully rhetorically. “No, I think they got the message.” Indeed, we all did.

2. Fancy furniture CEO visits Pity City!

As the CEO of MillerKnoll, which makes expensive and covetable midcentury furniture, Andi Owen hosted a company-wide online town hall in April, urging staffers to do whatever they could to insure that the company met its earnings targets. When asked how employees could stay motivated if they didn’t receive bonuses, she responded with the corporate equivalent of “Ask not what the $7,995 Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman in obsidian leather and oiled walnut can do for you; ask what you can do for the $7,995 Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman in obsidian leather and oiled walnut.” She snapped, “’What are we going to do if we don’t get a bonus?’ Spend your time and your effort thinking about the $26 million we need and not thinking about what you’re going to do if we don’t get a bonus. All right? Can I get some commitment for that?” She continued, “I had an old boss who said to me one time, ‘You can visit Pity City but you can’t live there.’ So people: Leave Pity City. Let’s get it done.” Owen responded to the very public blowback with an all-staff email. “I feel terrible that my rallying cry seemed insensitive. What I’d hoped would energize the team to meet a challenge we’ve met many times before landed in a way that I did not intend and for that I am sorry.” Why is this a terrible apology? Let’s look at our 6.5 step rubric. Owen doesn’t apologize for what she said; she apologized for how it was perceived. She blames the listener rather than taking responsibility. Her use of “seemed” rather than “was”; her use of “did not intend”; and the extremely limited parameters of what she says she’s sorry for (how her words “landed” rather than what she actually said) are all awful. She reminds me of TikTok’s “Corporate Erin.” 

@lisabevolving #corporateerin #boycottstarbucks ♬ original sound – Lisa Beasley

 

3. Ashton and Mila by the poolhouse with a letter-opener!

You’ve probably seen the Instagram video. After actor Danny Masterson was convicted of raping two women, his former costars Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis sent “character letters” to the judge; these letters are used to ask for leniency in sentencing. Kutcher and Kunis apologized, with somber faces and epic badness. So much sorry if-ing; so much passive voice; so much emphasis on INTENT rather than IMPACT (“we would never want to do that, and we’re sorry if that has taken place”). Saying “we support victims,” when the whole point of these letters was to support the perpetrator, is self-serving and disingenuous. The duo’s tortured syntax (“the pain that has been caused by the letters”) reflects their attempts at deflection. Also, saying, “Danny’s family asked us to write character letters” (as if it had been impossible to say no? as if it’s important to tell us that it wasn’t their idea?) and “[the letters] were intended for the judge to read” (subtext: JEEZ, you people weren’t supposed to know about them!) are ways of distancing themselves from their own conduct. Celebrities: If you can’t take responsibility for your actions, don’t apologize at all. Just don’t.

4. Jimmy Fallon is embarrassed!

In a boffo Rolling Stone expose, 16 current and former employees of “The Tonight Show” described a nightmare work environment. They said that Fallon screamed at the staff, sometimes seemed drunk or hung over, was capricious and forgetful, and fostered a truly toxic workplace culture. It was so bad, the staff created a “cry room” where they could go to sob after an encounter with Jimmy. After the story came out, Fallon apologized to staff via Zoom, saying, “It’s embarrassing and I feel so bad. Sorry if I embarrassed you and your family and friends. I feel so bad I can’t even tell you.” He added that he never intended to “create that type of atmosphere for the show” and said, “I want the show to be fun, [it] should be inclusive to everybody. It should be the best show.”

Hi! I’m not a douche!

Need we say why that apology blows? Again, let’s go to the steps! There’s that “sorry if” again, and the fact that he makes it all about his feelings, his shame, his mortification, rather than how his behavior affected others (step 3). The issue isn’t that the staff were embarrassed; it’s that they were SCREAMED AT. He doesn’t explain the steps he’s taking to ensure that the bad behavior won’t happen again (step 5). He doesn’t make amends (step 6). And a Rolling Stone follow-up said that staffers are still distressed that Fallon hasn’t made a public apology. Public figures, when called out, need to apologize both publicly and privately. Otherwise, the effect is to convey that problems are simply being spackled over, glibly moved past, coated with something like, oh, a coat of brown greasepaint or something.

5. Lauren Boebert is very gropey. Wait, no. She’s very SORRY.

In September, Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert was ejected from a touring production of the musical “Beetlejuice.” Her camp offered two apologies. The first, issued before there was extensive video evidence of what precisely transpired, was snarky bullshit. Her campaign manager offered the neener-neener,“I can confirm the stunning and salacious rumors: in her personal time, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert is indeed a supporter of the performing arts (gasp!)” Boebert herself tweeted, “I plead guilty to laughing and singing too loud!” There was also a wee zinger wishing that the Biden administration would police the nation’s borders as capably as the local theater policed people having fun. Also, reports of vaping were fake news!

The second apology was issued after footage came to light showing Boebert repeatedly vaping, being rude to the pregnant woman seated behind her who asked her to stop vaping, giggling as her date kept groping her boobs, and reaching between the legs of her date FOR REASONS. She was also seen wagging her finger in the face of security officers, to whom she apparently offered a “don’t you know who I am?” followed by a threat to “call the mayor.” The second apology was less snarky, but just as bad.

“The past few days have been difficult and humbling, and I’m truly sorry for the unwanted attention my Sunday evening in Denver has brought to the community. While none of my actions or words as a private citizen that night were intended to be malicious or meant to cause harm, the reality is they did and I regret that. There’s no perfect blueprint for going through a public and difficult divorce, which over the past few months has made for a challenging personal time for me and my entire family. I’ve tried to handle it with strength and grace as best I can, but I simply fell short of my values on Sunday. That’s unacceptable and I’m sorry.”

Welcome to a show about death!

Again, this is all about HER feelings (sense a pattern with these celebrity apologies?), how the relentless news media have affected her (“the past few days have been difficult”), blaming her “public and difficult divorce” (so … it’s OUR fault! we’re the public!) and coming up with a creative excuse for initially lying about the vaping:

“Whether it was the excitement of seeing a much-anticipated production or the natural anxiety of being in a new environment, I genuinely did not recall vaping that evening when I discussed the night’s events with my campaign team while confirming my enthusiasm for the musical. Regardless of my belief, it’s clear now that was not accurate; it was not my or my campaign’s intention to mislead, but we do understand the nature of how this looks.”

If she ever says another word about drag queens being a risk to our youth, someone please trot out this footage.

6. “That wasn’t me; it was artificial intelligence!”

In a conference call earlier this month, the president of the Illinois NAACP objected to the government providing aid to migrants at the expense of local unhoused Black people. Teresa Haley recorded saying,“These immigrants that come over here, they’ve been raping people, they’ve been breaking into homes. They’re like savages as well. They don’t speak the language and they look at us like we were crazy.” Another NAACP leader, distressed by the comments, resigned. When a local TV station reached out to Haley in Dubai, where she’d gone on vacation, she first denied making the statements, then suggested they were faked. “With AI, anything is possible,” she said. Her apology went pretty much the way you’d expect.

“First and foremost, I express my sincere apologies to anyone who may have been hurt or offended by my comments. I love and value all members of our communities — including immigrants. I have worked tirelessly to advocate for the underserved and the voiceless. I remain focused on denouncing injustices, racism, and discrimination. I am empathetic to the plight of all people, and I proudly serve as a beacon of hope to the hopeless. I embrace the mission of the NAACP, which is to ‘Achieve equity, political rights, and social inclusion by advancing policies and practices that expand human and civil rights, eliminate discrimination, and accelerate the well-being, education, and economic security of Black people and all persons of color.’”

That’s a whole lotta words about how wonderful she is, and a whole lot of not addressing what she actually said.

AND FINALLY! SorryWatch resolves to taste the rainbow, even though we’re M&Ms people

Look, we need to end this post on an upbeat note. Behold, one really good corporate apology.

In 2013, lime Skittles were replaced by green-apple Skittles. Lime lovers were upset and extremely vocal about it. Nine years later, the company launched an “Apologize the Rainbow” campaign. Skittles went live on Twitch and Twitter — and on an electronic billboard in Times Square — to deliver 138,880 personal apologies on Twitch and Twitter to all 138,880 people who’d complained online about the loss of lime Skittles. All 138,880 people were also offered a free package of Skittles consisting entirely of lime Skittles. (OK, eagle-eyed reader will note that this happened in 2022, but it got a bunch of advertising awards in 2023, so it counts. Also, we didn’t hear about this in 2022. #SorryNotSorry.)

In addition to this video, there is a 36-minute version with the delightful nebbish-y actor reading dozens of tweets and saying “We’re sorry” after every single one.

A creative director at DDB, the agency charged with creating the campaign, said in an interview, “We looked at so many corporate apologies, and they all had a few things in common: They were pretty hollow, generic and really gave the impression they were being forced to do it. We took the exact opposite approach. Not only did we make ours insanely personal by literally apologizing to each of the 130,880 person who complained, we also proudly surfaced all that online anger towards Skittles since it actually showed the passion people had for Lime.” The exec, Colin Selikow, added, “Apparently, changing the flavor of green Skittles has ruined childhoods, and it’s responsible for evil winning.”

Oh, Colin. As long as individuals — whether they are famous, non-famous, or candy — are willing to apologize well, and as long as people of good faith are willing to accept apologies made by people who apologize sincerely and want to do better, evil will not win.

Here’s to a 2024 in which celebrities provide less dipshittery and real people impress us with their ability to listen, learn, and apologize. 

Mike Richards’s first and last day as the new host of Jeopardy! was yesterday, Ah, Mike, we hardly knew ye, and did not care to. Let’s look at the man’s many apologies and not-apologies along the journey to not being on our TV anymore, we hope, ever, praise be. Today, Mike, still the executive producer of Jeopardy! (today!), apologized to his staff thusly:

Why is this a bad apology? Here’s a quick reminder of our 6 steps to a good apology:

1. Say you’re sorry
2. For what you did
3. Show you understand why it was hurtful/bad
4. Only explain if it is essential
5. Say why it won’t happen again
6. Make amends

Richards is 0 for 6.

His opening — “It pains me” — is telling. Mike’s talking about how he feels; he’s in pain. And isn’t that what matters? As for “these past incidents and comments” –  what incidents and comments? There’s no specificity there. Without specificity, one possible interpretation is that he’s putting  his own behavior (“past incidents”) on equal footing with what other people have said about him (“and comments”).  That’s why we have Step #2, people!

Moving on: Using the words “cast such a shadow on Jeopardy!” implies that whatever unspecified incidents (WHO KNOWS?) happened, they’ve hurt the show. Not the women he belittled, not the staffers at both The Price is Right and Jeopardy! whom he unjustly fired or insulted or hurt, not Ken Jennings or the guest hosts whose auditions he subverted (by choosing which shows would be shared with focus groups, and by scheduling fan fave LeVar Burton for only one week as opposed to the two that other possible hosts got and further, slating him during the Olympics).

We hate to say that any one word is invariably a mark of a bad apology (though there are enough red-flag words that we’ve made Bad Apology Bingo cards out of them)…but the word “distraction” has never appeared in a good apology. Distractions are sideshows, diversions, divertissements! They take valuable attention away from what’s important! In this case, Mike Richards is saying that what is important is that Mike Richards should be the host of Jeopardy.

Mike Richards’s declaration of “I want to apologize to each of you for the unwanted attention” for the “confusion and delays” serves to blame people who are not Mike Richards. If only no one had paid attention to Mike Richards’s past, there would be less confusion and fewer delays right now! How irksome are the press and public, focusing on the wrong things, getting all distracting and loud and rude, keeping you, my colleagues, from doing your important work! Embarrassing our holy Sony! Preventing people from focusing on the vital task of moving on and also hiring me, Mike Richards, to do this job I am the right man for!

Also, “delays” is an odd word choice. We think he’s saying to the staff and Sony, sorry that this SHADOW, this DISTRACTION, this BROUHAHA not of my making, means we have to tiresomely search for a permanent host again instead of focusing on building our brand and looking forward into a noble future. (There’s a reason the phrase “let’s move on” makes frequent appearances in bad apologies.)

Snarly is a Jeopardy! obsessive; she and her spouse and kids have long watched together. We rarely agree on TV shows, and Jeopardy! is the rare show we all enjoy. We are also inveterate Green Bay Packers fans and were very proud of Our Aaron (he worked so hard! with his pre-hosting training regimen and bright Post-Its all over the podium telling himself to stand up straight and stuff!). Truthfully, Snarly would have been fine with every single candidate who was not Mike Richards, except for Dr. Oz, who should take his pseudoscience and weight-loss scams and go live under a rock.

(Also, now that Snarly thinks that nothing is beneath Mike Richards, she suspects that Dr. Oz only got the temporary guest-hosting gig to make the very green Mike Richards look better in comparison.)

While we’re here, just for fun, let’s look at some of Richards’s earlier non-apologies.

First, this one, from August 9th, which he offered after the news came out that a) he’d put himself into host contention and b) his Price is Right tenure was dogged by a history of sexual harassment and wrongful termination complaints. (All hail The Ringer’s reporting on this story.)

Let’s see, we have use of passive voice. We have “the way my comments have been characterized,” “as a father,” “this is not who I am,” and “a lot going on right now”… in short, what a plethora of Bad Apology Bingo phrases!

There’s no apology here.

But immediately after the publication of the death-knell-producing blockbuster piece in The Ringer by Claire McNear, who threw herself on a grenade for all of us by listening to all 41 episodes of a podcast Richards hosted from 2013-2014, Richards did apologize. But well? Nope.

McNear noted that on his podcast, Richards had hectored his female cohost (formerly his assistant) about her “booby pictures,” and referred to her former job as convention floor model at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as “booth ho,” “booth slut,” and “boothstitute.” Looking at a picture of her friends, he’d called them “really frumpy and overweight,” saying they “look terrible…they look fat” as they posed in one-piece bathing suits on a girlfriends’ getaway. (McNear had earlier reported that at The Price Is Right, Richards wanted the show’s models to wear bikinis on screen more often.) Richards also used the r-word and called his not-tall colleague the m-word (he used the same word about the actress Kristen Chenoweth). Responding to a guest’s non-specific comment about big noses, he said, “ixnay on the ose-nay, she’s not an ew-Jay.” He made disparaging comments about people on unemployment and criticized his colleague for giving a dollar to a homeless woman because the woman might have bought crack or meth (“that’s the sound of America going down the toilet”), which is ironic given that Alex Trebek was a longtime financial supporter of the Hope of the Valley Rescue Mission, a shelter for those in need, and that Mike Richards was not averse to a nice handout.

When the Ringer’s factchecking department called, all 41 episodes, plus the hosting site, were immediately taken down. (Shocker.) (The Internet is forever, though, so you can find them if you look.)

Richards responded:

“It is humbling to confront a terribly embarrassing moment of misjudgment, thoughtlessness, and insensitivity from nearly a decade ago. Looking back now, there is no excuse, of course, for the comments I made on this podcast and I am deeply sorry. The podcast was intended to be a series of irreverent conversations between longtime friends who had a history of joking around. Even with the passage of time, it’s more than clear that my attempts to be funny and provocative were not acceptable, and I have removed the episodes. My responsibilities today as a father, husband, and a public personality who speaks to many people through my role on television means I have substantial and serious obligations as a role model, and I intend to live up to them.”

Again, this response is all about him. His very first response: “Terribly embarrassing.” And again, woefully unspecific. A “moment of misjudgment”? 41 episodes is not a moment, sir. “The comments I made”? A good apology names the offense. He was just joking around, being funny, being provocative! (Three more Bad Apology Bingo phrases, by the way.) He and his co-host were “longtime friends,” so obviously she didn’t mind this stuff some people are apparently perceiving as sexist or classist or antisemitic! There are two attempts to place the podcast in the dim recesses of the past (“nearly a decade ago” and “passage of time”) but Richards was 38, and 2014 was neither a decade ago nor a time before people knew right from wrong. Plus it’s a little awkward to deploy the “as a husband and father” cliche when you’ve been repeatedly accused of discriminating against female employees for getting pregnant.

Of course, no one is perfect. Some of us might even recall bad apologies by other would-be Jeopardy hosts! Mayim Bialik apologized badly for a New York Times opinion piece she wrote in 2017 that seemed to say that because she dressed modestly and wasn’t conventionally beautiful, she was safe from harassment and assault from the likes of Harvey Weinstein. Intentionally or not, the essay was redolent of “not like other girls” and “they were asking for it.”

Bialik wrote:

I followed my mother’s strong example to not put up with anyone calling me “baby” or demanding hugs on set. I was always aware that I was out of step with the expected norm for girls and women in Hollywood… As a proud feminist with little desire to diet, get plastic surgery or hire a personal trainer, I have almost no personal experience with men asking me to meetings in their hotel rooms…. I still make choices every day as a 41-year-old actress that I think of as self-protecting and wise. I have decided that my sexual self is best reserved for private situations with those I am most intimate with. I dress modestly. I don’t act flirtatiously with men as a policy.

When folks on social media responded with dismay, Bialik’s initial reaction was to double down:

“I’m being told my New York Times piece resonated with so many and I am grateful for all the feedback. I also see a bunch of people have taken my words out of context of the Hollywood machine and twisted them to imply that God forbid I would blame a woman for her assault based on clothing or behavior. Anyone who knows me and my feminism knows that’s absurd and not at all what this piece was about.”

(Anyone who knows me! Another Bad Apology Bingo!)

In a Facebook Live interview with her assigning editor at the Times, Bari Weiss, Bialik used the phrase “not my intention” (SorryWatch often says “intention is far less important than impact”) and added, “I really do regret that this became what it became” — another airy wave of non-specifics and non-taking of responsibility. She continued, “I am deeply, deeply hurt if any woman who has been assaulted, or man, thinks that in any way I was victim-blaming…in 900 words I did the best I could to describe an entire very complicated dynamic that is really best for a thesis and not a 900-word piece.” Her feelings. Her intent. Her bad luck to only have 900 words when she would have been totes clear about not blaming victims if she’d only had a higher word count.

However, to her credit, she did explicitly say in the interview what she didn’t say in the essay: “There is no way to avoid being a victim of assault, and the only people who are responsible for their behavior are the predators.” Good! Finally, shortly thereafter, she ACTUALLY apologized and did it well.

Alas, Bialik was also weaselly in apologizing for her positions on vaccines. In a 2009 interview with People Magazine, she said, “We are a non-vaccinating family, but I make no claims about people’s individual decisions. We based ours on research and discussions with our pediatrician.” And in her 2012 parenting book, she wrote, “We made an informed decision not to vaccinate our children.” Under pressure from the public in 2015, she tweeted, “Honestly, people. Do your research. Do what’s right for you. Let me live my life and you live yours.” She provided a link to now-deleted FB post.

But she also tweeted, “dispelling rumors about my stance on vaccines. I’m not anti. My kids are vaccinated. So much anger and hysteria. I hope this clears things up.” (Calling other women hysterical is never a good idea. I hope this clears things up.) Bialik was explicit that she had been vaccinated against Covid.

But soft! Levar Burton is imperfect too! How dare!

Burton apologized for tweeting insensitively immediately after Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death was announced.

He finally did apologize well. And he elaborated in an interview with the CBC, telling interviewer George Stroumboulopoulos, “I apologize, because I said something that was really insensitive. I made a joke just hours after the announcement was made and it was wrong of me and I certainly did not mean to cause his family any additional harm and I’m really, really sorry.” Bravo for not making any excuses. However, he still wasn’t entirely kind or clear on the subject of addiction, continuing, “Well, as much as a disease as it is, addiction does begin and end with a choice, and it is the strength of will that goes along with ‘by the grace of God therefore I go every day, one day at a time.’” Still pretty hurtful to the family and to anyone who’s lost a loved one to addiction. (Snarly knows many people who fought really hard and bravely to kick their habit, and succeeded for a while, but ultimately succumbed. They weren’t inherently weak; they had a disease.)

Anyhoo: Both Bialik and Burton made public apologies far, far better than Richards’s.

Here’s an idea, though: Maybe let’s not look to celebrities as moral arbiters and role models? We can love LeVar for encouraging reading, and appreciate Mayim for being a super-terrific, smart, positive and graceful guest host (did you watch? She was sensational at the job!) without expecting them never to disappoint us. They’re human. They’re famous in a culture that worships fame. They’re accustomed to adoration and to people hanging on their every word. And they’re gonna screw up. So how about we make it a policy to forgive minor trespasses and accept apologies that seem genuine, whether the sinner is famous or not? And if someone is a full-on jobby-flavored fart lozenge,* how about we agree: Do not let them host a game show.

*Snarly just looked up some Scottish insults; the Scots are so gifted. 

SorryWatch enjoyed Kliph Nesteroff’s book We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans in Comedy, and we weren’t even expecting to find any apologies.

The title’s from a joke by comedian Charlie Hill, explaining that he’s from the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. “We used to be from New York, but we had a little real estate problem.”

There are a couple of interesting apologies, one of the earliest from Will Rogers, a once-virally famous comedian, actor, writer, broadcaster, and social commenter. Born in 1879, Rogers was Cherokee, although most people don’t seem to have categorized him that way. He was a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, and 9/32 Cherokee if you want to do that blood quantum thing. He started out in vaudeville doing rope tricks he’d first learned as a young man cowboying in the Nation. During the act one day he complained that the tricks were harder to do because he wasn’t allowed to cuss onstage, which got a huge laugh – and he was off on his long career.

Will Rogers in 1900. Plain cowboy in the big city.

By 1934, Rogers was very busy, very popular. One of his many performance outlets was the Good Gulf Program, a radio show promoting Gulf gasoline. On January 21^st, he included a song, “The Last Round-Up.” Waxing informative, he introduced it by saying “The words to the song are cowboy all right, but the tune is really a [n-word] spiritual.” He used the n-word several more times as he went along.

It was 1934. Did people care about that in 1934? You bet they did. The New York Daily News reported there were “protests from all over the nation last night following his broadcast.” The thriving Black press covered the broadcast, reactions, and protests.

Nesteroff writes: “The Philadelphia Tribune suggested a boycott… campaign. In an editorial reprinted around the country, the paper stated, ‘Will Rogers, by using a certain insulting epithet in referring to Negroes, offers an opportunity for colored Americans to prove to American business that it cannot insult them and get away with it…. It has been asked what is [there to do] about the Rogers insult? Will Rogers is paid to advertise the products of the Gulf Refining Company. Good Gulf Gasoline is its chief product…. The effective protest is not then in writing letters to newspapers… but a refusal to make Will Rogers a successful sales promoter for the Gulf products.’”

A boycott was organized against Gulf stations, Will Roger films, and theaters that showed them.

“Talkies? No problem, I can talk. Hmm, what’ll I say?”

But wait, don’t be mad! NBC said Rogers was “simply using a term which was common throughout the South and West.” A young Roy Wilkins didn’t buy that. “This excuse is not sufficient for you to permit it to be used over your network. Besides, it is not true. It may be true in Claremore, Oklahoma, where Mr. Rogers had his beginning [but] is the local standard of an Oklahoma town of 3,720 inhabitants to become the standard of a national broadcasting network?””

On his next Gulf show, Rogers addressed the anger. He said he wouldn’t use the n-word again, but said the n-word was harmless and used with love. Certainly it showed no bad thought on Rogers’s part. “I wasn’t only raised among darkies down in Indian Territory. I was raised by them. And Lord, I was five years out on the ranch before I ever knew there was a white child.”

According to biographer Ben Yagoda, he also wrote a long telegram in response to a Mr. Tobias (SorryWatch thinks this was civil rights activist Channing Tobias) “…I think you folks are wrong in jumping too hastily onto someone or anyone who might use the word with no more thought or belittlement than I did. There is millions in the South who use that word, and if the race has more real friends among millions of people down there I don’t know where it is. I am offering no excuse for using it myself, I was wrong, but its the intention and not the wording that you must look for. What in the world, what particle of action had ever lead a single Negro to believe that I hadent the best wishes toward their race?…

“A colored cowpuncher taught me how to rope, and I contributed to him and his wife, and went out of my way to drive by and see them every time I went to my home in Okla. Up to the time of their death, he never worked for a soul during his whole lifetime but us. All these things make this criticism the more unfair and hard on me. If there is a colored performer (I might have known in the old vaudeville days and I knew many) if there is a Negro porter, waiter, or any one of your race, that I have come in contact with in all my years, if you or anyone else can find a one that will say that I ever by action, or word ever did one thing to humiliate, or show in any way that I was antagonistic to them, I will, ah well I would do anything, for you cant find em, for I never did.”

“Aw, don’t get upset Mr. Tobias, millions of us call you that.”

It’s a terrible apology, defensive all the way through. “You folks are wrong”? It ignores the distinction between intent and impact. It also employs the disreputable “Some of my best friends are…” tactic. SorryWatch wondered if that ploy was already old in 1934, and it was. Bradford Plumer, in The New Republic, found a reference as early as 1908 (“Some of my best friends are Republicans”) and it was used in the 1920s (“Some of my dearest friends are Catholic”)

You might have thought Rogers would know better. When Rogers was in military school another cadet referred to an Indian as a “thoroughbred.” (As in a thoroughbred horse.) According to a classmate, Rogers was outraged, angrily said the right word was “fullblood,” and that it spoiled his whole afternoon to hear an Indian called a thoroughbred.

Why didn’t he see that the n-words spoiled a whole lot of afternoons?

Will Rogers (as a simple Swedish-American country boy) & Mary Warren in “Guile of Women,” 1920. “Gee, Hulda, looks like folks completely misunderstood me.”

In this case Rogers may not have been identifying as a Cherokee member of a persecuted group, but perhaps as Cherokee gentry only a generation removed from slaveholding gentry. His forebears were among the “Old Settlers,” a small group of Cherokee who signed the 1835 Treaty of New Echota, agreeing to give up all land claims east of the Mississippi and settle in Oklahoma. The Old Settlers thereby avoided being forcibly deported, received some payment, and got first choice of places to settle. The U.S. government then used the Treaty of New Echota as an excuse to deport the majority of the Cherokees – who had not signed the treaty, nor had their leaders – on the cruel and forcible Trail of Tears. ‘You gave up your land claims!’

Will Rogers grew up in a prosperous family. The Rogers family had land and cattle (until the next government sliminess – the Allotment Act), and owned slaves. In the Civil War, the Cherokees, surrounded by Confederates, threw their lot in with them. Rogers’s father, Clem Rogers, was thus a former slaveholder and a Confederate veteran.

After emancipation, people who had been enslaved by Cherokees were designated Cherokee Freedmen, and held an anomalous position. Were they citizens of the Cherokee Nation? Could they vote for offices in the Nation? Could they serve? So yeah, solidarity wasn’t always complete.

There’s more to say about the local standards of Claremore, Oklahoma, referenced by Roy Wilkins above. Rogers may have absorbed what was ‘commonly’ said there, but he also influenced that. Yagoda’s biography mentions that because the young Rogers went on cattle-selling drives to Kansas City, he learned and brought back the latest crazes from that metropolis, including what were called “coon songs.” These portrayed black people as “dice-throwing, razor-wielding, fried-chicken-eating, watermelon-stealing savage[s].” Yes, black people performed them too, notably Bert Williams, who later shared vaudeville stages with Rogers. Yes, Rogers’s delight in insulting stereotypes could co-exist with loving respect for people like Dan Walker, who taught him how to rope. But if he hadn’t figured out the problems there by the age of 55, it was because he chose not to. The protests after the broadcast could have been a belated wake-up call, but no. “You folks are wrong…”

Still from “An Unwilling Hero” (1921). Nick Cogley and Will Rogers, Cogley in blackface; Rogers as a ordinary country boy.

Rogers’s bad apology shows that he didn’t get it, in some really classic ways. He didn’t get it – but he got away with it. SorryWatch hasn’t found information that the boycott continued after his lousy apology and pledge not to use the n-word again.

Someone asked the singer-songwriter Nick Cave, on his intimate personal site The Red Hand Files, “How do you forgive somebody whom you love very much but has done something truly terrible?”

He answered:

How to forgive the unforgivable? Now there is a question. Sometimes we feel the crime is such a violation, and so egregious, that it is beyond absolution – but the struggle to forgive is where it can find its true meaning. Even the attempt to move toward forgiveness allows us the opportunity to touch the borders of grace. To try is an act of resistance against the forces of malevolence – a form of defiant grace.

Read the rest of his response here.

Hahahahaha, let’s all pose in coolie hats and do ching-chong eye-stretchy karate-y things! Let’s encourage this small child to participate merrily and racistly in our racist merriment!

Eater explains that as part of an event in which chefs from around the world swap recipes, Chef Gianluca Gorini of daGorini restaurant in Bagno di Romagna, Italy, tackled the recipes of Victor Liong of Lee Ho Fook restaurant in Melbourne, Australia. And posted this photo. Which is now deleted. But several people got screenshots.

Yikes. Who does Gianluca Gorini think he is, Jesse Watters?

When people on the Internet expressed dismay, Gorini took down the photo and put up an apology. It was…not good.

This is not a good lede: “JEEZ, who could ever guess that a photo could cause so much hullaballoo!” Gianluca, you should have been able to guess. And using a head-clutching GARSH photo, like a confused Dad confronted with a Diaper Genie in a commercial, is way minimizing of the offense committed.

Gianluca goes on to fail to say what he’s apologizing for. (And remember, the photo is gone. Unless you know the backstory, you have no clue what this apology is for.) Those gestures he and his staff and the little boy are making were “dictated by the excitement and enthusiasm that the confrontation with a new culture has generated in our daily work”! See? They we were simply filled with zesty high spirits when faced with upscale Chinese-Australian recipes! But now Giancarlo realizes he doesn’t “know the subject of the question well enough” — no one has ever taught him that it’s bad to mock Asian people —  so he has “underestimated its meaning.” The meaning of racism? The meaning of coolie hats? The meaning of making wacky-pretend “Asian eyes” with your fingers?

Gianluca gives the tired, inadequate “to all those I have offended” apology (nope, apologize to EVERYONE, unreservedly); tells us about his intentions (not relevant; actions are what matter); and asks Victor Liong, the chef at Lee Ho Fook, to forgive him (do not ask for forgiveness; earn it).

In addition to the, y’know, racism of presenting Lee Ho Fook as a caricature of Chinese-ness, Gianluca and his team have demeaned Victor Liong as a chef, as a creator. The restaurant specializes in new-wave food reflecting a wide variety of cultural influences. Its name is from the opening lyrics of Warren Zevon’s perfect “Werewolves of London” (I saw a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand/Walking through the streets of Soho in the rain/He was looking for a place called Lee Ho Fook’s/Gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein”). Zevon’s werewolves are sophisticates, sporting exquisitely tailored clothes and perfect hair, hobnobbing with the Queen and having cocktails at Trader Vic’s. And in that spirit, Lee Ho Fook is clearly playful and sophisticated; a recent Instagram post featured a shot of Chow Yun Fat in John Woo’s breakout action movie A Better Tomorrow, lighting a cigarette with a hundred-dollar bill, to showcase a special dinner made by young breakout-talented Chinese-Aussie chefs. It’s a generous gesture, to use your successful restaurant to spotlight new talent.

In an interview, Liong said, “You spend all of your youth rejecting – well, I did anyway – Chinese culture and not trying to be too Chinese and not seeing any value in it. I went through a bit of a self-discovery process and part of that [has been] opening Lee Ho Fook and cooking Chinese. If anything [it’s] something that I’m quite passionate now – going on a journey to rediscover that culture.” Reducing that journey to a racist caricature, as Gianluca and his staff did, is pretty sickening. We hope Giancarlo has reached out personally to Liong, not just waved at him on social media.

SorryWatch must remain hopeful that Gianluca can learn and grow from this experience. (If we didn’t think people could do better, we wouldn’t do this site.) Years ago, the Italian company Barilla turned its homophobic debacle into an opportunity to become much, much better. Maybe Gianluca can do the same.

Does an apology erase the past? Of course not. But an apology still has value. A good one can help people who are hurt and angry feel better. That’s not nothing. The word “heal” is wildly overused (often by people who apologize badly, who use the idea of healing as shorthand for “hey, let’s all move on and talk about something other than my behavior!”) but a good apology actually can be restorative: to those hurt, to bystanders, to the person who did wrong, and even to the wider world.

In a grand sense, healing from the revelations of the recent college admissions payoff scandal is impossible.

Anyone who didn’t know how incredibly corrupt college admissions can be, how un-level the playing field is, how many “side doors” there are for those who know how to look for them, how much harder the path to college is for those without money or connections or white steamroller parents…well, they know now. It’s a deeply messed-up system. And for high schoolers with disadvantages of one kind or another — poor kids, kids of color, first-generation students, undocumented students, kids with disabilities — the scandal rubs their faces in something they already knew: that fancy people can work the system and circumvent the system in ways that are utterly beyond their reach. This particular incidence — involving paid-off proctors, fake test-takers, wealthy kids flown to special cheating-friendly test centers, thrilling fake action shots of non-athletic wealthy youth on athletic equipment, and little cut-out rich-kid heads digitally glued onto Olympic athlete bodies — probably showed less privileged kids that the truth is even uglier than they’d thought. There is nothing anyone can say to make this OK. (Particularly since many Americans would prefer to kvetch about affirmative action than acknowledge the huge, unfair weight that legacies, rich people, and athletes have on admissions and college life.)

So I’m not saying we should forgive Felicity Huffman for delivering a good apology last week. I’m saying that her good apology nonetheless has the power to help people feel a bit better. If they choose to. No one is obligated to accept any apology. Apologies for wrongs are morally mandatory; forgiveness is not.

Huffman’s statement:

 I am in full acceptance of my guilt, and with deep regret and shame over what I have done, I accept full responsibility for my actions and will accept the consequences that stem from those actions. I am ashamed of the pain I have caused my daughter, my family, my friends, my colleagues and the educational community. I want to apologize to them and, especially, I want to apologize to the students who work hard every day to get into college, and to their parents who make tremendous sacrifices to support their children and do so honestly. My daughter knew absolutely nothing about my actions, and in my misguided and profoundly wrong way, I have betrayed her. This transgression toward her and the public I will carry for the rest of my life. My desire to help my daughter is no excuse to break the law or engage in dishonesty.

Why is this a good apology? It uses the word “apologize” (not “regret”; as we’ve said before here, regret is about your own feelings; apologies are about other people’s feelings), acknowledges and owns the offense, recognizes the harm caused, makes no excuses. A perfect apology involves making amends and offering reparations, but those things don’t belong in this statement and she was wise to keep them out of it. At this moment, we don’t want to hear about her starting a scholarship for poor kids or making a giant donation to an educational foundation; that would seem manipulative and opportunistic and cheesy as all get out. What she should be doing is working like hell behind the scenes to make amends and rebuild trust with her kids (both of them: the one she essentially called stupid and the one she essentially called smart and hard-working and not in need of subterranean parental cheating help) and considering ways down the road to help other students in a quiet, non-self-aggrandizing way, as a form of doing penance.

One of the kids swept up in the scandal also issued a good apology. Jack Buckingham, whose mother Jane Buckingham, to put it baldly, bought him an ACT proctor, gave a statement to the The Hollywood Reporter last month:

I have been advised not to speak on the matter at hand but what I will say is this: I know there are millions of kids out there both wealthy and less fortunate who grind their ass off just to have a shot at the college of their dreams. I am upset that I was unknowingly involved in a large scheme that helps give kids who may not work as hard as others an advantage over those who truly deserve those spots. For that I am sorry though I know my word does not mean much to many people at the moment. While the situation I am going through is not a pleasant one, I take comfort in the fact that this might help finally cut down on money and wealth being such a heavy factor in college admissions. Instead, I hope colleges may prioritize [looking at] an applicants’ character, intellect and other qualities over everything else. It was probably not a smart idea to say anything but I needed to get that off my chest.

This is a kid who, unlike the kids who posed on rowing machines and lied about their athletic affiliations, did not know what his mom was up to. (Many of the kids didn’t. Read the whole indictment.) Buckingham paid $50K for her son, who lived with her in Los Angeles, to take the ACT at a test center in Houston, where a proctor was being bought off. But shortly before the scheduled test, Jack developed tonsillitis and his pediatrician said he shouldn’t fly. Jack wanted to go anyway. His mother was recorded telling William Singer, owner of The Edge College & Career Network, “According to [Jack], he’s like, ‘I really don’t feel that bad.” But Jack was scheduled for surgery, and Jane was worried about him flying against doctor’s orders; Jack also wouldn’t be able to fly for two weeks after the surgery. But Jack wanted to take the test! So Singer and Jane Buckingham conspired to have a ringer take the test for him in Houston, and to give Jack a test that he was told he had permission to take at home. (Why would Jack believe that tonsillitis meant he could take the test at home? Well, no one claimed he was a rocket scientist. And kids who’ve had parents smoothing the way for them their entire lives tend to believe what those parents tell them.)

Regardless of Jack’s intellectual heft, his emotional and empathetic smarts seem good. His statement to the Hollywood Reporter indicates that he gets why the Varsity Blues scheme was morally wrong. He understands fundamental social inequities; he understands his own privilege. He apologizes even though he didn’t actually know he was part of the scheme. It’s a graceful statement; he manages not to throw his mother under the bus even though she deserves it.

Of course, it may not be his statement at all, even though the voice really sounds like that of a teenage boy. At least one family caught up in Operation Varsity Blues has hired a crisis manager, Juda Engelmayer, who works at “distancing the student from the alleged criminal activity of the parent.” Engelmayer works to create a different narrative for the kid (“online reputation management and search engine optimization”), pushing the scandal down in Internet searches on the kid’s name and making sure their hobbies, charitable work, and wholesome photos show up on Instagram and Facebook apart from any mention of the parents’ actions. He charges $15-30K a month. He works for all kinds of rich people getting bad PR — one of his clients is Harvey Weinstein. If Engelmayer wrote Jack Buckingham’s statement, he’s really good at his job. This is demoralizing.

Or maybe Jack Buckingham actually wrote the statement himself! Who knows! Anyway, here is something that is factual and not demoralizing: De-emphasizing testing seems to be the way of the collegiate future. The University of Chicago, Bowdoin, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Bates, Colby, GW, Holy Cross, Clark, the New School, Emerson, Bard, Middlebury, Sarah Lawrence, Lewis & Clark, NYU, Mt. Holyoke, Brandeis, Worcester Polytechnic, Pitzer, Whitman, Franklin & Marshall, Temple, Loyola, Connecticut College, Fairfield, Mills, CalArts, Bennington, and many more are now SAT- and ACT-optional. More schools are joining that list every year. There are still a zillion inequities in education to wrestle with, from pre-K to grad school, but one hopes that soon ultra-wealthy people with non-academically-inclined children will go back to buying buildings and making huge unrestricted Kushner-esque donations as in days of yore. Something they’ve never apologized for.

Millionaire beer heiress Cindy McCain, second wife and widow of the late Senator John McCain, was passing through the Phoenix airport when she was bothered by the sight of a woman with a small child “of a different ethnicity.” Yeah, so? McCain herself has been in an airport, perhaps the same one, with a child “of a different ethnicity.” No one hassled her in 1991 when she flew in with a baby girl from Bangladesh the McCains later adopted, their youngest child Bridget McCain.

She just knew something was wrong.
Cindy McCain by Gage Skidmore, 2013.

Here’s a scary, boastful, account of the incident she related on radio station KTAR.

McCain said, “I came in from a trip I’d been on and I spotted – it looked odd. It was a woman of a different ethnicity than the child, this little toddler she had, and something didn’t click with me. I tell people, ‘Trust your gut.’ I went over to the police and told them what I thought, and they went over and questioned her. And by God, she was trafficking that kid.”

“No way!” said one of the hosts. (A comment that doesn’t commit to belief one way or the other.)

“And you said a toddler?” said the other host.

“Yes, a toddler. It was a toddler. She was waiting for the guy who bought the child to get off the airplane.”

Things didn’t click the way I expect them to click. They weren’t click-making. I tell people, “Show me the click.”
Cindy McCain by Gage Skidmore, 2013.

McCain said she follows the dictum, “If you see something, say something.” And we can all be part of it. “You can make a difference. Everyone can make a difference on this. It’s going on not just in big venues, but it’s in your own neighborhood.”

How inspiring! However, every part of this story after “they went over and questioned her” is false. The Phoenix Police Department confirmed that McCain told them of her failure to click, and that they did question the woman who didn’t make McCain click, and that everything was fine. A welfare check revealed “no evidence of criminal conduct or child endangerment.”

We are told that McCain apologized, but that’s not exactly right.

The AP said, “Cindy McCain has apologized….” People wrote, “Cindy McCain apologizes…” The New York Times referred to the “Cindy McCain apology…” And so on.

What McCain actually [tweeted] was:

At Phoenix Sky Harbor, I reported an incident that I thought was trafficking. I commend the police officers for their diligence. I apologize if anything else I have said on this matter distracts from “if you see something, say something”

— Cindy McCain (@cindymccain) February 7, 2019

McCain says she apologizes – but not for calling the cops on an innocent family. Not for giving a false account. She only apologizes for the possibility that she discouraged people from doing exactly what she did. Which is why she apologizes to Twitter-readers and not THE WOMAN SHE CALLED THE COPS ON.

By the way, there was no “incident” until McCain created one.

So I took action. You’re welcome.
Cindy McCain by Gage Skidmore, 2013.

She does not address the grave unpleasantness of having your family ties questioned. ‘Is this your child? Why doesn’t your child look like you? Can you prove this is your child?’ Or even more horrible questions: ‘Are you trafficking this child for sex, or selling it for adoption? Did you buy this child for yourself, or are you a middleman? Will this child be put to work at a Trump golf course?”

Such interrogation is scarier in an era in which law enforcement officers are wrenching children from their parents’ arms, incarcerating them, losing track of them, or giving them into the custody of strangers who want to keep them. Often right there in Arizona.

There’s a possible racial profiling angle. “Possible” because the police have, correctly, withheld personal information about the family. One wonders if McCain’s inability to find a click was because the people did not resemble her own previous situation – a white woman with a toddler of a different ethnicity – but rather a white toddler with a woman of a different ethnicity. But maybe not. Some people don’t seem to learn much from personal experience.

There’s the issue of “trusting your gut” and “seeing something.” That’s very subjective. Everyone’s gut is different and tells them different things. If you read Nextdoor, you know that some people’s guts tell them that everything and everyone are very suspicious ALL THE TIME. Maybe McCain’s gut is cattywampus and causing her to see trafficking everywhere, EVEN IN HER OWN NEIGHBORHOOD, because she’s been co-chairing a state council on human trafficking.

Trafficking gang with victim? Republican National Convention, 2008.

Another big issue is McCain’s fabulations about this incident. “And by God, she was trafficking that kid.” “She was waiting for the guy who bought the child to get off the airplane.” Not true, not true, not true. The woman was not trafficking the child. She was not awaiting a child-buyer.

Did McCain knowingly lie? Or did she believe it herself?

If she knew she was lying (but didn’t think anyone would check), she should be driven out of public life. If she believed it herself, what the HELL? Has she jumped the tracks entirely?

If someone’s gut suggests there’s something seriously wrong with McCain’s thinking, is it their duty to call for a welfare check?

Thanks to tipster Barry H.

The apology letter to Terry Crews (delightful, funny Brooklyn Nine-Nine actor) from Adam Venit (handsy, gross, disgraced movie agent who groped Crews’s genitals at a party) is really bad. Spectacularly bad. Bad enough to warrant its very own Bad Apology Bingo card.

Venit actually wrote the letter back in March, but Crews released it publicly yesterday after Venit resigned from his high-powered agency job. The implication, obv, is that Crews accepted the apology only with Venit’s resignation.

@WME ‘s ADAM VENIT FULL APOLOGY LETTER:

Received: March 22nd, 2018

Accepted WITH HIS RESIGNATION: September 10th, 2018#Accountability

Read in full below: pic.twitter.com/Hbe4tu7UPL

— terrycrews (@terrycrews) September 14, 2018

Sorrywatch is glad that Crews is satisfied. But just because Crews forgives Venit doesn’t mean the rest of us have to. SorryWatch tweeted this very sentiment back when Lisa Brennan-Jobs’s memoir — in which she forgives her psychologically abusive father Steve Jobs — was published.

Apologies are mandatory. Forgiveness is not. If Lisa Brennan-Jobs wants to forgive her father, it’s her choice. We can respect it and simultaneously be horrified by him. https://t.co/8I0SA2H8Jn

— Sorry Watch (@SorryWatch) August 24, 2018

Same thing here.

Venit’s apology is so narcissistic; so full of heroic “I”s and “me”s; so determined to place himself on the same journey (?), the same moral footing (??), the same heroic character arc (???) as Crews; so unwilling to see himself as the victimizer and Crews as the victim; so disgustingly eager to move on to the redemption arc portion of the story that it generated its very own Bad Apology Bingo game! (The third in a series!) Adam Venit thus becomes the ONLY PERSON EVER (so far) to earned his very own solo card, with enough vile turns of phrase in one single apology to fill 16 squares. (And it would have filled the standard 25-space template if we’d included words/phrases/qualities that have appeared on previous Bad Apology Bingo cards, such as “Move Forward,” Vagueness, Self-Aggrandizement,”If”, Noble Talk of Our/My Values, Lack of Specificity, and “Move On”!) So congrats, Adam! We’re calling this The Adam Venit (‘Venit’ Is Only Two Letters From ‘Venal’) Career-Memorial (We Hope) Bingo Card.

The story, as originally broken by Fashionista: A clothing company, in an anti-cyberbullying initiative (apparently it is a REVELATION that cyberbullying is wrong!), partnered with celebrities and “influencers” (again, please, no) to put cruel online comments received by said celebrities and “influencers” on sweatshirts. This would serve to educate us all that mean comments are mean.

However, an image of one of the sweatshirts was leaked!

Uh, OK

Apparently the quote was something said by a cyberbully to plus-size model Paloma Elsesser. This fact, however, is not clear from an image of a skinny girl wearing a shirt with an anti-fat-girl quote on it. Then LPA, the company that made the shirt, apologized REALLY, REALLY BADLY!

“The prematurely released images featured on Revolve.com was [sic] not only included without context of the overall campaign but regrettably featured one of the pieces on a model who’s [sic] size was not reflective of the piece’s commentary on body positivity,” the statement reads. “We at Revolve sincerely apologize to all those involved — particularly Lena, Emily, Cara, Suki and Paloma — our loyal customers, and the community as a whole for this error.”

Run through the SorryWatch translator (beep boop boop boop boop):

“Prematurely released” NOT OUR FAULT “on Revolve.com” BLAME THE RETAILER THAT LEAKED THE IMAGE, NOT US “without context” AGAIN, THAT IS REVOLVE, R-E-V-O-L-V-E, NOT US “sincerely apologize to all those involved — particularly [famous people]” OUR PRIMARY CONCERN IS THE FAMOUS PEOPLE “our loyal customers, and the community” FIRST THE FAMOUS PEOPLE, THEN THE PEOPLE WHO GIVE US MONEY, AND LAST/LEAST, THE REST OF YOU “for this error” DID WE MENTION BLAME REVOLVE NOT US BLAME REVOLVE NOT US

SorryWatch understands spinning and capitalism, but it is imperative that corporations and people (not synonymous, Mitt) pause and THINK before they apologize. Because knee-jerk “omigod make this bad feeling/bad publicity STOP” apologies are rarely good apologies.

LPA later came out with a slightly better apology that still blames Revolve.

Still not great!

Here again, sucking up to the celebrity comes before apologizing to the public. But would the campaign miraculously become unproblematic if the sweatshirt had been shown on Lena Dunham instead of on a skinny model? (Please note: This is the first time “Lena Dunham” and “unproblematic” have ever been used in the same sentence.) Lena Dunham may not be a size o, but she’s not fat. Even the model who received the online insult, Paloma Elsesser, is fat by skinny-model standards but not by actual-American-woman standards. According to her agency, her measurements are 39-42-44, which means she’s between a size 10 and 12 in US sizes. The average American woman is a size 14. 

But LPA does not manufacture plus sizes. Its largest size, XL (43-35.5-45.5), would likely fit someone who’s a 14 or 16. The retailer, Resolve — not to pile on or anything after LPA was all blame-y — does not even carry a size XL. Its largest size, L, is an 8-10. Presumably they’d be reaching WAAAAY outside their comfort zone, carrying this manatee-esque sweatshirt that comes in an XL! They would have had to call their web designer to add an XL button! Presumably they agreed to carry the hideous huge XL sweatshirt because it was for charity, so they could hold their tiny noses and suck up the visceral horror.

Upshot: The fashion industry is frequently oblivious to its own biases. If you don’t make a sweatshirt about fat that won’t fit a fat girl, don’t make the sweatshirt. THAT, not the fact that you showed the sweatshirt on a size S instead of a size M (probably Lena’s size) or size L (probably Paloma’s size) is what warrants an apology.

And sadly, both LPA and Resolve hung Elsesser, the model who’d received the insult, out to dry. She actually sounds like a smart, self-aware, socially conscious person who is insightful about sizeism. (It’s not her fault that plus models are not actually plus size; girl’s gotta work, she’s gorgeous, and my hope is that she didn’t know the shirt would only be available in straight sizes.) But it seems that no one apologized to her first thing, which should have been both companies’ first step. She had to find out about the kerfuffle from someone (who seems to be an “influencer”!) on Instagram:

 

 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I heard back from @palomija and she told me she is MORTIFIED about how this quote has been used, and is asking for her quote to be pulled • The brand @lpa responded and they have got @revolve to take down the shots – this is our convo. Problematic marketing = a problem with diversity in the work place. This is still incredibly problematic and an awful attempt at ‘claiming back’ toxic narratives because (in my opinion) it just gives them power by putting them back into the world and at a £162 price tag. The designs went up to XL, so the women who this tee is supposed to ‘empower’ probably wouldn’t even fit into one. But at least we got the pics taken down…Ugh.

A post shared by FLOSS (@florencegiven) on Sep 12, 2018 at 8:23am PDT

Believe it or not, I’m not gonna make fun of the notion of a $168 sweatshirt. Capitalism. Charity. Whatevs. Though even if we’d known the cyberbullying-campaign It-Girls-raising-money-for-charity backstory, who the hell, fat or skinny, would wear this shirt? (Even if it WERE available in plus sizes?)

All this happened on Wednesday. Finally, today, Friday, Resolve apologized.

Soooomething is missing from this apology…

Do not apologize for “hurting and offending” us. Apologize for WHAT YOU DID. Not our feelings. Even worse, saying that the shirt was “not shot on an appropriate model” does not address the elephant [sic] in the room: YOU DON’T MAKE CLOTHING FOR ACTUAL FAT PEOPLE. There’s no way for the shirt to be taken as anything but snark at fat people if only thin people can wear it. The lack of self-awareness among most straight-size fashion people is really something.

It’s good that Revolve is making a donation to the organization that the shirt was supposed to help, Girls Write Now. (It’s a great org, btw.) Also good that they named the amount, unlike LPA. (Watch me play you jerks against each other! Can we shame LPA into naming an amount?)

Feel free to buy a sweatshirt (regular or plus-size, as you wish) and write BULLYING IS MEAN on it with a Sharpie. (You could also just wear it as is?) Then make your own donation to Girls Write Now. Le voila!

Yay!