According to the Associated Press, 2006 is/was the year of apologies, and the argument is convincing as well as rather funny.
Rarely have there been so many prominent public apologies coming so close together, saying at once so much – "That wasn't really me, it was the booze talking, I have inner rage, I have a dark side, I'm in rehab" – and so little. So little, that is, about the actual transgression that made them necessary.
Entertainers, politicians, media figures, religious leaders. Why have public apologies become such a mainstay of our culture? It seems that the minute a transgression occurs, be it small or large, we wait for penitence. It's the other shoe that needs to drop before we can move on.
Not to steal credit, but you might have seen omens of this at Newswire. Speaking of all this, does anyone have any favorite public fuckups? It's tempting to put this at the top, if only because it's not unbearable on repeated viewings.