When I was maybe seven or eight, around the time that my parents bought my family’s first TV, I often watched a morning children’s show called Captain Kangaroo. The Captain, a rotund grandfatherly guy with a bowl haircut, a cheesy mustache, and a coat with big pockets (like a kangaroo’s) was the ’50s-’60s version of Mr. Rogers. I don’t recall specific episodes, but I remember the Captain repeatedly referring to “the magic words,” which were “please” and “thank-you.” The lesson from the Captain was that these were the words that moved people forward and opened doors through the journey of life. These words exist across multiple languages, and we learn them as toddlers.
Yet, because humans are imperfect, and we are destined to screw up over and over, the word “sorry” is also a magical word, to let us back in when we make bad choices and the doors slam in our faces. All major religions and most legal systems contain some form of repentance and atonement. That is the way a society repairs things that go wrong. If people do not know how to use this third magical word, things don’t get repaired, they stay broken. Most of us learn to say “sorry” by the time we are potty trained.
So, I’m astounded once again by the seeming inability of another full-grown, public figure, this time the now ex-NFL coach Jon Gruden, to apologize for a bad act. Gruden, a former winning Super Bowl coach and most recently head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders, was forced to resign after his pattern, over several years, of racist, misogynistic, and homophobic e-mails was exposed. Gruden said “sorry,” the magic absolver, in his public so-called “apology.”
The problem is Gruden and the many other “sorry” wrongdoers who regularly make headlines, do not deserve absolution when they use the word not in remorse but to wiggle out of responsibility. The magic does not work that way. Here is Gruden’s “apology”: “I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt anyone.” Yeah, you did, Jon. Even a five-year-old realizes that you hit your brother because you want to hurt him, not because you don’t. When you say demeaning things about black people, women, gay people, you intend to demean those people. That’s the whole point.
I’m really sick to death of these apologies that take the weight off the wrongdoer and put it on the person wronged. The problem to Gruden and his ilk is not that they did something wrong but that someone, inconveniently for them, was wronged by what they did, the old “if I offended anyone” loophole we’ve seen countless times.
At the last newspaper I worked for, in Fairbanks, Alaska, one of my colleagues, a columnist I hold in high esteem, would rail at our paper’s standard headline every year when wintry weather arrived. The headline was some version of “Icy roads cause several accidents.” My colleague’s point was that stupid, careless drivers who refused to slow down caused several accidents, not the icy roads.
When people, through their decisions, cause damage, their “sorry” should be for their decisions to cause the damage. That’s called being “accountable”—another word that could work magic if it was invoked more often.