On Monday, Tom Ricks, a Pulitzer-winning journalist on military matters, was invited onto Fox News. When asked his views on the possible nomination of Susan Rice as Secretary of State, his succinct predictions included the remark that the Benghazi issue had been hyped by the Fox network. Anchor Jon Scott asked how it could be called hype. Ricks seemed pleased to answer in some detail, ending by saying Benghazi had been hyped “probably because Fox was operating as a wing of the Republican party.”

At that, Ricks’s appearance was cut short, and that’s when some debated events took place, alas not on tape.

Here’s the segment that caused Fox to cut Ricks off:

The Hollywood Reporter talked to Fox news vp Michael Clemente about the aborted incident, and Clemente said Ricks was “trying to anchor,” and that he “apologized in our offices afterward but doesn’t have the strength of character to do that publicly.” When the Reporter asked Ricks about this, he denied it. He asked the Reporter to ask Clemente exactly what Ricks was supposed to have said in apology.

They did, and Clemente said Ricks said, “Sorry… I’m tired from a non-stop book tour.”

Ricks then emailed Clemente, copying various journalists. He detailed his conversations after his meteoric appearance at Fox, ending, “Later, as I was leaving, the booker or producer… said she thought I had been rude. I said I might have been a bit snappish because I am tired of [the] book tour. This was in no way an apology but rather an explanation of why I jumped a bit when the anchor began the segment with the assertion that pressure on the White House was building—which it most clearly was not.”

Clemente insisted that Ricks had apologized. “I understand being tired, but he said he was sorry and that to me sounds like an apology.”

When Huffington Post Live interviewer Ahmed Shihab-Eldin asked Ricks about Clemente’s claim that he apologized, Ricks clarified: “That’s horseshit.”

On a roll, Ricks went on to tell MSNBC that they were no more impartial than Fox.

Clemente claims Ricks apologized, though he doesn’t say what for. Ricks certainly isn’t apologetic now, so what’s the point Clemente’s trying to make? Apparently, that Ricks knows in his heart or knew for one moment that he was wrong (about Fox’s political stance? about whether his remarks came at an appropriate moment? who the heck knows?), but now is too weak-charactered to say it.

It seems unlikely that Ricks apologized. It’s possible that in a moment of reflexive socialization he uttered the word “Sorry,” but as Clemente would know if he read SorryWatch, the mere word “sorry” at the beginning of a sentence doesn’t mean jack.

Ricks on tour with earlier book.

I’d like to say this shows how powerful the idea of apology is, but I don’t think it does. Clemente is using a debased definition of apology. If Ricks really did apologize, that would be a rotten apology – a casual “Sorry” that was immediately denied. Not an apology I’d accept. I don’t think Clemente would either.

But Clemente treasures the idea that Ricks was apologetic for a fleeting second. For him, an apology is a knuckling under, a backing down, a sign of weakness. Which is not how grownups should view apologies.