Mayor culpa: Climbing aboard apology bandwagon

The Oklahoman Editorial

Published: November 3, 2008

Tony Blair apologized for British indifference to the Irish famine. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologized for the treatment of Aborigines. Pope John Paul II apologized for the Crusades. U.S. Rep. Dan Boren, D-Muskogee, wants the U.S. government to apologize to Indians.

Bill Clinton was ever ready to apologize for anything that anyone of his race ever did to anyone not of that race. Tulsa Democratic Mayor Kathy Taylor has apologized for the city’s role in the 1921 racial violence that left dozens dead and a black business district in ruins.

"There is a fashion these days for apologies,” writes author Theodore Dalrymple. The en vogue apology isn’t for what one has done himself (that kind, Dalrymple notes, is as unfashionable as ever) but for public apologies by politicians "for crimes and misdemeanors of their ancestors, or at least their predecessors.”

What the survivors of the Tulsa violence want is money, not an apology. It cost Taylor nothing to apologize for something she didn’t do. As we noted in March, "Money talks. Sorry walks.”

The examples cited above may fit what Dalyrmple calls "false apology syndrome.” Writing in the Fall 2008 edition of a John Templeton Foundation journal, he points out the cheapness of apologies from politicians, who get a sense of moral superiority from the apology, often accompanied by bogus or insincere guilt.

False apology syndrome is a "rich but poisonous mixture of self-importance, libertinism, condescension, bad faith, loose thinking and indifference...”

Note: Dalrymple says he’s very sorry if you disagree with his conclusions.

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