Canadian Cynic

The lost art of apologizing

You've probably noticed that no one really apologizes anymore and, amazingly, no, I'm not talking about media icon Condi Rice, for whom the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were pretty much everyone else's fault but hers.

I'm talking about the ham-fisted members of the Mississippi state law enforcement who demanded that reporters erase their recordings of a speech by Supreme Court justice and unabashed duck murderer Antonin "Fat Tony" Scalia, which you can read about here.

According to all of the press accounts, no members of the media were warned beforehand that Scalia doesn't like his speeches recorded -- like just about everything else surrounding the Bush administration, this is apparently due to concerns with "national security".

While law enforcement officials want to claim that no one actually demanded that the reporters erase their recordings, the record shows otherwise: "The reporter, Denise Grones, initially resisted, but later showed the deputy how to erase the recording after the officer took the device from her." It's pretty hard to argue that you're not pressuring someone after you've simply taken their equipment.

And what did the fine folks who serve and protect have to say when the firestorm hit? Pretty much anything that didn't resemble an apology.

Flowers said the fact no announcement was made regarding Scalia's wishes, ``could have possibly been a faux pas on our behalf.''

He added that ``It would have been handled, on hindsight, a little bit different.''

Ah. Possibly a faux pas. Perhaps handled differently in hindsight. And yet, we have U.S. marshal Nehemiah Flowers, who "defended the deputy's actions."

So, in short, we're maybe kinda, sorta sorry. But not sorry enough to actually say that we're sorry. Oh, hell, we're not sorry at all.