Tila Tequila (née Thien Thanh Thi Nguyen) is a damaged person who should receive no attention. I am angry at myself for addressing this, yet here I go, mostly because as Gawker writer Rich Juzwiak said on Twitter, “A new high bar for apologies has been set.” By which I hope he means a new low bar. And yes, it is.

Yesterday serial reality TV personage Tila Tequila was kicked off a reality show after the producers discovered (excuse me? I who live under a rock knew about this, and they didn’t?) that she’d praised Hitler. This is her response.

Back in 2013 I made a statement about Hitler not being a bad person, and immediately realized soon after that I had made a terrible mistake that would ultimately come back to haunt me. During that time I had been suffering from severe depression, and drug addiction for many years prior to that. I also attempted to commit suicide in 2012, and overdosed on prescription pills. I wanted to die. I felt worthless, and unloved as that pain continued to grow causing me to further spiral out of control. Losing touch of myself, and reality. It was absolutely the lowest point I had ever reached in my life, and today I am truly sorry to everyone that I may have hurt along my self-destructive path. I have made many mistakes that I am definitely not proud about, but I am only a flawed human who is trying my best to be a better person than I was in the past. I am deeply sorry for my irresponsible, wreckless, and selfish actions and I hope that everyone can forgive me for the pain that I may have caused. I want to be a good role model for my daughter because I don’t want her to go through what I have had to endure. I hope that I will be given a second chance at life to make things right again.  We all make mistakes in life, and I have unfortunately made many in the public eye. Although I cannot do much to change my past mistakes now, I can however, try to make things right from this moment forward, and be the best person that I can be. I am in no way, shape or form a racist nor antisemitic, and absolutely 100% not a Nazi supporter. It was a careless mistake I made in 2013 while suffering severe depression, drug addiction, and suicidal. That is not the woman have grown up to be today, and the loving mother that I have become. I humbly ask for forgiveness from everyone I may have hurt or offended. I just want a second chance at life to start over, and be given a chance to fix my wrongs. It will be a work in progress, but I want to do this so that my daughter will be proud of me one day, and have a positive, strong role model in her life and that starts with me. I hope that Celebrity Big Brother will give me a second chance.”

OK, no. To paraphrase Foggy Nelson on Daredevil, “A mistake? Misspelling Hanukkah is a mistake! Endorsing a genocidal mass murderer is something else!”

Besides, she doesn’t truly apologize. She asks forgiveness. Twice. That’s not the same as apologizing. Asking forgiveness is about wanting something for yourself, something that should be a gift, as we discussed just one post ago. No one is entitled to give you this gift; you have to earn it. She does say she’s sorry to anyone she’s hurt, twice, but doesn’t say precisely what she did (see below for a reminder!) and both times she includes an excuse: Once with the term “[w]reckless” and once with “my self-destructive path.” She’s telling us she’s hurt herself. This statement is about how she’s suffered and what she wants.

Here’s what she needs to apologize for:

come on, she could have photoshopped in a pile of corpses! this is nothing!

She posted that image on her FB page in 2013. Hi, Tila! Let’s talk about your Nazi arm band, your poorly photoshopped Waffen SS M37 hat, your Lucite heels, and the fact that you’re straddling the train tracks leading to Auschwitz! In the accompanying post, she called Hitler a “special and sweet kid” who was bullied and rejected by art schools just as she, Tila, was rejected when she tried to convert to Judaism. (She should have been rejected. If you’ve seen Orange is the New Black, btw, you’d know that just as in Jewish tradition you have to apologize three times if you’re not forgiven before you are allowed to stop apologizing, you are required to ask to convert three times before a rabbi is supposed to help you. So nothing personal, Tila.)

(You should watch this clip, btw. Great writing, great acting, great understanding of Judaism.)

When Tila’s fans expressed dismay at her you-go-Hitler feelings, she responded, ““[J]ust because I feel sympathy, compassion, and forgiveness for others such as Hitler means I am now a monster? All for trying to open your eyes to the truth that Hitler was NOT as bad as he was painted out to be?” Well, uh, yes.

Try twice more to apologize, Tila. (I’ll even give you that first non-apology as a gimme.) Do a little thinking and learning first. To get you started, here’s a story about the sage Rabbi Hillel, who was once approached by a snarky non-Jew who said he wanted to convert, but only if the rabbi could teach him the entire Torah while the man stood on one foot. Hillel looked at the man, and said, “What is hateful unto you, do not do unto your neighbor. That is the whole Torah; all the rest is commentary. Now, go and study.” 

Take this story to heart.