Uruguayan footballer Luis Suarez, after being banned for four months and fined £66,000, has finally acknowledged biting Italian player Giorgio Chiellini, and apologized. (He did not acknowledge or apologize for his two previous chomping offenses.) He tweeted:
Need I point out the terribleness here? Let’s play FIND THE OWNERSHIP. “Chiellini suffered the physical result of a bite in the collision he suffered with me”? Well, the rest of us are suffering from too much passive voice. We need a simple, declarative, “I bit him.” Which needs to be followed by “And I lied about it.” (For those who do not follow this mishegas: Initially Suarez employed what Yahoo Sports called “the ‘I fell and hurt my teeth on his delicious back’ defense” — telling FIFA he’d accidentally fallen atop Chiellini, tragically causing “a strong pain in my teeth.” As Yahoo Sports drily noted, “no other player at the World Cup has slipped and fallen teeth first into someone’s flesh. For the third time.” There are some clear images of Suarez indulging in two previous mid-match snack attacks. Meanwhile, Uruguay suggested that the images of this bite were Photoshopped. A good apology would need to acknowledge this history of committing the same crime as well as the history of deceit surrounding this particular iteration of it.) So, what else is wrong here? “I deeply regret what occurred,” compounds the offense of failing to name and own the sin. Spell it out, Suarez! “I deeply regret embedding my impressive chompers in his sweet, sweet flesh”! Also, when a person says “independent from the fallout” (that is, the big suspension and fine) before saying, “I’m sorry,” it’s pretty clear that the statement isn’t independent of the fallout at all. It’s obvious that this is theater rather than penance.
The Internet has been having a fun time with all this:
But it’s still tiresome. Suarez’s promise that “there will never be another incident” (again, failing to say what the incident actually WAS, and failing to use our pronoun friends “I” and “me,” or ANY of our active verb friends like “bite,” “nosh,” “hurt” or “cheat”) holds about as much water as that of a 3-year-old swearing that she will never steal another donut.
Chiellini tweeted back at Suarez:
Polite but terse. Forgotten isn’t forgiven. And Chiellini artfully makes clear he knows exactly what Suarez’s motive for apologizing is.
