Backhanded Apology: Difference between revisions

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'''Snibril''': How can you be sentenced to death for apologising?

'''Pismire''': I said I was sorry, and that, on reflection, he did have the brains of a meat pie. }}

* [[Plato]]'s ''[[Apology ~~of Socrates~~]]'' appears to be one of these, considering that Socrates spends most of his speech lamenting how stupid everybody is. But the definition of "apology" at the time also meant "a reasoned argument in justification of something". So Socrates's "apology" was him explaining to the people of Athens his beliefs and methods.

* [[Plato]]'s ''[[Apology (Plato)]]'' appears to be one of these, considering that Socrates spends most of his speech lamenting how stupid everybody is. But the definition of "apology" at the time also meant "a reasoned argument in justification of something". So Socrates's "apology" was him explaining to the people of Athens his beliefs and methods.

* In Kai Lung's story about the discovery of tea, the Emperor is advised to confess his sins in order to bring an end to a drought:

{{quote|“No complete record of Ming Wang’s confession now exists, all those who accompanied him having entered into a deep compact to preserve a stubborn silence. It is admitted, however, that it was of inordinate length, very explicit in its details, and that it implicated practically every courtier and official of any standing. In a final access of self-reproach the Emperor penitently admitted that he was the guilty head of a thoroughly decayed and criminal autocracy, that he weakly surrounded himself with greedy and incompetent officials, and that he had thoughtlessly permitted sycophancy, bribery and peculation to abound.”|pp. 39-40 of Ernest Bramah, ''Kai Lung unrolls his Mat'' (1928; repr. Penguin, 1937).}}

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* Following a tweet by Chris Brown, Andy Levy made a comment about domestic abuse. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TOjUKwoHUyw Here] is his apology to said comment.

* [[Orson Welles]]'s [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho_9XTnlJKM apology] for the ''[[War of the Worlds]]'' broadcast essentially amounted to, "I'm sorry, I just didn't know so many people were stupid."

* First rule of PR. Don't apologize for making a mistake, hurting someone's feelings, offending a social group. Instead apologize, but accuse them taking your words out of context and being offended on purpose/being sensitive. To many examples to list. "Sorry If This Thing Offended You" is not an apology in most circles.

** Late 2011 presented an archetypal example from Paul Christoforo of Ocean Marketing who, in the course of publicly abusing some customers, did not believe that one of the people he was talking to ran [[Penny Arcade]]. [http://www.popehat.com/2011/12/27/outsource-your-marketing-outsource-your-reputation-and-ethics-applies-to-every-industry/ Hilarity ensued.] The [http://www.popehat.com/2011/12/28/internet-justice-and-paul-christoforos-awful-non-apology/ series of non-apologies was summarized] as "Sorry, I wouldn't have done that if I had known I couldn't get away with it."

* When [[Countdown with Keith Olbermann|Keith Olbermann]] was removed from Current in March 2012, he released a statement on Twitter which began with this: