Have any celebrities apologized for entitled narcissistic inappropro behavior recently?

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA (/wipes eyes) yes.

1. Musclebound Marvel meatballs!

During a promo junket for their comic-book movie, Chris Evans and Jeremy Renner called Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow character a “slut” and a “complete whore.” There is no reason for you to click on the video below — trust me on this — but I include it to show you that I am a journalist.

Yesterday, via their representatives, they apologized. Inverted-Dorito-shaped Evans did so quite well, which fits with his public persona as someone who is basically a nice boy who loves his mom and may not be the sharpest knife in the drawer but appreciates his good fortune and privilege. The veiny-armed Renner apologized poorly, in line with the guy who went off-Teleprompter at the Golden Globes to make a leering joke about his co-presenter’s tits.

Via the Hollywood Reporter, Evans’ statement: “Yesterday we were asked about the rumors that Black Widow wanted to be in a relationship with both Hawkeye and Captain America. We answered in a very juvenile and offensive way that rightfully angered some fans. I regret it and sincerely apologize.” And Renner’s statement: “I am sorry that this tasteless joke about a fictional character offended anyone. It was not meant to be serious in any way. Just poking fun during an exhausting and tedious press tour.”

Twitter sensation Angie Manfredi promptly dubbed the duo Goofus and Gallant.

Indeed, Evans sounded a lot like Captain America, taking responsibility (“juvenile and offensive”), accepting that he was wrong (“rightfully angered”) and expressing regret. For this apology to be truly top-notch, he’d have to apologize both publicly and personally to Johansson (we don’t know that he didn’t do the latter). And Chris, we know you’re a charitable guy: In this case, a donation to a feminist cause would not go amiss.

As for Renner, where to begin?  “About a fictional character”: Jeez, you uptight freaks, it’s not like I said it about a real person. It’s not like reducing an ass-kicking female character to a sex object and calling her a splayed-legged hobag cocktease has any relation to anything in the real world. “Not meant to be serious”: Lighten up. “Just poking fun”: Ditto. “Exhausting and tedious press tour”: WAH WAH WAH MY LIFE AS A MILLIONAIRE MOVIE STAR SUCKS WAH WAH I WISH I WORKED IN A MINE.

I am reminded of a line from Matt Fraction’s marvelous graphic novel about Hawkeye: “I’m an orphan raised by carnies fighting with a stick and a string from the Paleolithic era.” YES! TOTES PALEOLITHIC! WAY TO BE METHOD, RENNER! (If you watch the video, and again, please don’t, you will note that Renner started the slut-shaming, and Evans bro’d along.) Renner would do well to pay attention to another quote from Fraction’s graphic novel: “Y’wanna know the best part about being an Avenger? Having Captain America around you all the time. He just—the guy just brings out the absolute best in people. You want to be good when he’s around. You really do.” SO TRY, JEMMY. And Evans, be more Cap. Lead; don’t follow.

APOLOGY GRADE FOR EVANS: B+

APOLOGY GRADE FOR RENNER: D

2. Dreadful Devious Daredevil #1!

Possibly confused and saddened by the well-reviewed Netflix reboot of Daredevil (of Affleck’s critically reviled 2003 version, one critic said, “Justice may be blind, but the only enjoyment to be had out of this is to be blind drunk”), Affleck did a bad thing. He requested that Harvard historian Henry “Skip” Louis Gates not mention Affleck’s slave-owning ancestor in Gates’s show “Finding Your Roots.” When the true story came out, via Wikileaks (you can read the original script and the changes at the Washington Post), Affleck sorta-apologized on his Facebook page. “I regret my initial thoughts that the issue of slavery not be included in the story,” he said.

As we’ve discussed numerous times, “regret” is a cousin of apology — not a very close cousin. Regret takes no ownership and is purely about the feelings of the speaker, not about anyone he or she has wronged.

Affleck noted in his semi-apology, “Skip decided what went into the show.” (Way to take responsibility.) In FB comments, he elaborated, “To clarify, because I see this story being framed as ‘censorship’ on some sites, when I told Skip I was uneasy about the slave owner, he told me he had not included it in his preliminary cut because there wasn’t much detail – a name and no details, so he wasn’t going with it to begin with. He also told me they would do a book later with a more complete story, and I said I would be happy to participate and talk about the issues more broadly.” See, no problem! It wasn’t gonna be in the show anyway! And I will TOTALLY talk about it LATER. The only reason I don’t want to talk about it now is because NOW is not LATER.

Unfortunately, as the New York Post pointed out, the Wikileaks docs don’t exactly hew to that version of what happened. According to the emails, Gates did categorize what Affleck tried to do as censorship: “One of our guests has asked us to edit out something about one of his ancestors–the fact that he owned slaves,” Gates wrote to the head of Sony USA, a friend. “Now, four or five of our guests this season descend from slave owners, including Ken Burns. We’ve never had anyone ever try to censor or edit what we found. He’s a megastar. What do we do?” Both Gates and the Sony honcho clearly knew that bowing to Affleck’s wishes would be a breach of journalistic ethics guidelines (CEO: “I would take it out if no one knows” and Gates: “To do this would be a violation of PBS rules, actually, even for Batman”) but they did it anyway. And indeed, PBS has launched an ethics investigation. So: For Affleck’s apology to be meaningful, he’d have to take full responsibility for throwing his Batmobile-sized celebrity weight around. His apology ought to acknowledge that he did censor Gates, that many other guests on the show have acknowledged slave-owning ancestors (hi, white people in America, guess what) and that he alone put Gates in an ethically compromised position. (“Skip decided” is not how you take ownership, Batman. Stop sounding like billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne.)

APOLOGY GRADE FOR AFFLECK: C-

3. Rai Revels in Racist References!

Finally, a less widely reported crap-celebrity-apology piece, courtesy of Sorrywatch reader Nocturna.

A group of Indian feminists and children’s rights activists penned an open letter to actress Aishwarya Rai (now Aishwarya Rai Bachchan), pointing out that a jewelry company ad she’s appeared in was super-duper-racist. “In the advertisement you appear to be representing aristocracy from a bygone era – bejewelled, poised and relaxing while an obviously underage slave-child, very dark and emaciated, struggles to hold an oversize umbrella over your head,” they noted. The letter went on to point out:

While advertisers routinely use fantasy images to sell products, they must surely desist from using images that condone, legitimise, normalise, or build desirable fantasy around slavery or servitude of any kind, including child slavery or child servitude. Further, the extremely fair colour of your skin (as projected in the advertisement) contrasted with the black skin of the slave-boy is obviously a deliberate “creative” juxtaposition by the advertising agency, and insidiously racist. The genealogy of this image can be traced back to 17th and 18th century colonial European portraits of white aristocracy, depicting women being waited upon by their black “servants”.

The authors shared several vintage European portraits reminiscent of the image, like this one! (Tell me if you know who the artist is, because I am a Philistine.)

The letter was signed by Farah Naqvi, Writer and Feminist Activist; Nisha Agrawal, CEO, Oxfam India; Enakshi Ganguly & Bharti Ali, Co-Directors, HAQ: Centre for Child Rights; Madhu Mehra, Executive Director, Partners for Law in Development; Shantha Sinha, former Chairperson, National Commission for Protection of Child Rights; Harsh Mander, Centre for Equity Studies; and Mridula Bajaj, Executive Director, Mobile Creches.

Well, the company did withdraw the ad, so that’s a win? But the apologies from both Kalyan Jewelers and Rai leave something to be desired. Kalyan’s response:

With regard to the item Open letter to Aishwarya Rai Bachchan: This ad you figure in is insidiously racist, the creative was intended to present the royalty, timeless beauty and elegance. However, if we have inadvertently hurt the sentiments of any individual or organization, we deeply regret the same. We have started the process of withdrawing this creative from our campaign.

Jeez, ACTIVIST PEOPLE, sorry you don’t understand royalty, timeless beauty and elegance! Or creativity! And IF (the bedeviling non-apology IF!) we “inadvertently” offended ANYONE at all, we regret it. (We do not apologize for it. We regret.) And the response from Archana Sadanand, Imagesmiths, Publicist to Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, is worse.

At the onset, we would like to thank you on drawing our attention to the observation of the perception of the advertisement. Here above an attachment of the shot taken by somebody during the shoot. The final layout of the ad is entirely the prerogative of the creative team for a brand. However shall forward your article as a viewpoint that can be taken into consideration by the creative team of professional working on the brand visual communication. Thank you once again.

“Observation of the perception of the advertisement”! That’s a tongue-twister! I’m not  mocking any of the other wording in the statement, since I suspect English is not the publicist’s first language, but “observation of the perception of the advertisement” is fabulous PR-speak in any language. Passive-voice, non-committal, lacking in meaningful nouns (who observed and perceived what?). More importantly, the attachment showed Aishwarya Rai Bachchan without the little Black slave.

The implication, obviously, is that Aishwarya Rai Bachchan had NO IDEA there was going to be a wee emaciated slave child standing behind her. (Though for a photo taken “by somebody during the shoot,” that is a LOT of excellent Photoshop.)

The group of social activists responded with exquisite, extensive, surgical politeness and precision. Read their whole response here, but here are some choice snippets:

Your response makes it seem that a star like her is powerless, and her image is controlled entirely by the brand she endorses and the advertising agency. That seems not only disingenuous, but quite disrespectful to Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. We do sincerely hope neither is the case, and feel compelled to ask if she herself has authorised you to project her in this manner, as the victim of a photoshoot beyond her control?

[T]his photo of the “actual” shoot, without the slave-child, does little to absolve a star brand ambassador of responsibility for the advertisement as it has finally appeared – glorifying and creating desire around child slavery. This may not have been the intention, but has been a grave lapse.

[W]e do wish to disagree that this is simply a matter of “our viewpoint” and we have in our Open Letter gone to great pains to demonstrate through photographic evidence the direct inspiration for this enduring fantasy image – which is colonial, racist portraiture of white women posing with black child slaves.

Yes, she is a star. But, we hope she accepts her stardom with full sense of social responsibility, and has the power to acknowledge that she is also human and capable of error.

We request that you communicate to Aishwarya Rai Bachchan that she should play a visible role in ensuring withdrawal of this offensive image, and make it publically known through a statement, that she has done so; making it explicit that she alone has the right to control her image; and stating categorically that she not only stands strongly against racism, slavery, and child labour of any kind, but also importantly stands for responsible and progressive advertising.

Yes.

APOLOGY GRADE FOR KALYAN AND RAI (GROUP PROJECT): D+ (saved from an F by the fact that the ad is indeed being withdrawn.)

If any of the players in this post apologize better, we’ll keep you posted.