LEFT BRAIN / RIGHT BRAIN

Apology has become the siren call of the end of the century. Politicians of all levels are apologizing to their constituency for any of an infinite number of slights, both small and large. The clergy are apologizing for the sins of the past, including the long past. Is this good for us, or are we just using a simple phrase to get us out of our collective responsibilities, and purge us of our collective guilt?

When President Clinton apologized to the African American community for the slavery that ended over a century ago and the racial hatred, bigotry, and inequalities since, he started a groundswell of popular thinking that apologizing was good and necessary for the vitality of the nation. His thinking was that, once an apology was made, the country could finally start to come together as a whole. His apolgizies did release, although slightly, a simmering tension underlying the fabric of American life. It was a catharsis for the nation as a whole. A national tragedy was brought further into the light to be addressed. And with further apologies from our politicians, even more problems were brought to light: gender inequality, the depradations of Manifest Destiny, and so on. The million slights against a million targets by a million perpetrators were aired. "Sorry" became an easy word to say because everyone was sorry.

And, most recently, on his trip through the Middle East, Pope John Paul II apologized for the Catholic church's silence during the Holocaust, the bloody Crusades, the Inquisition, and for the still lingering bitterness between Christians and Jews throughout the world. Inasmuch as being a sincere apology from the leader of the Catholic world, it was also a declaration that all of us, even the Holy Church, the center of Christian thinking, are human beings and are therefore humanly fallible. That mistakes were and will be made, and that they must be acknowledged in order for changes to come about.

Apologies are good, and although today they seem to be overused, they'll never lose their impact. In the act of apologizing, both sides gain. The apologizer defuses a tense situation caused by the trespass, as well as relieving a measure of guilt from one's shoulders. The apologizee receives a bit of comfort, knowing that a slight was not deliberately done, and that healing can take place. And once responsibility for a slight is acknowledged, reparations, even purely emotional ones, can be made.

That seems a cold definition, but it is one that is easily digested. To go further would go beyond the way I understand it, and I am not philosopher enough to go that far. If this explanation seems too simplistic, well...I'm sorry.

Oh yeah? Well, I'm NOT sorry!

The trend was around long before President Clinthole got the White House all sticky and fishy-cigar smellin', but he made it his Cause. I'm talking about the profusion of apologies filling the air like a pathetic drizzle. Everybody's sorry for everything. Yeah, we apologize for the daily slights we perpetrate on each other, sure, but Pres. Swill has got us all apologizing for things a goodly proportion of us weren't even around to participate in. Speaking for all of us as a nation, he apologized to the American Indians for the policies of Manifest Destiny and taking the land of the previous occupants in exchange for smallpox and balls of lead delivered really fast and maybe some shiny beads. He apologized for all of us to the entire African-American population for the torments of slavery. He apologized to all the Jews of the World for the U.S.'s hesitancy before stomping Hitler and his entire Nazi following into hell. And I know, in my black, shrivelly heart of coal, that while he was saying how sorry he was and how he was feeling our pain, he had a petite intern hidden inside his podium and he was feeling something else. He did apologize for the Monica Lewinski thing to Hell-ery...oh yes, she's making him sorry, I'll bet. But I digress.

After Clinton got done sobbing, from inside the Cathaholic ranks Cardinal Law apologized for the church for not doing enough to support the abolition of slavery as well as the accumulated sins of its flock. He didn't get into the juicy details...he just hit everything with a "I'm sorry for everything and let's just leave it at that, okay?" sort of speech. Then, not to be outdone by one of his minor leaguers, Pope J.P. Jr. apologized for the Crusades, the Inquisition, the still lingering feelings of animosity of Cathaholics towards the Jews for offing one of Christendom's best P.R. guys, and for not immediately opposing the Nazi's during the Holocaust. Then he said he was sorry for mumbling into near incoherence most of his prior apologies.

And the apologies are still being hurled: History Revisionists are apologizing to the Japanese for America's nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki and for torching Tokyo. The I.R.S. is apologizing for sending Guido and Knuckles to your home to collect the $23.08 you owe in back taxes. Your friend Mike is sorry for getting drunk and screwing your sister(or maybe it was your mother...he can't be sure 'cause he was wicked wasted).

Saying you're sorry is a sign of weakness, especially if you aren't even responsible for the wrongs being apologized for. If I took my twelve gauge and peppered your ass with birdshot accidentally, I'd apologize (after reloading) even if your were acting like an asshole and really deserved it. However, if any overreaching, weasely, gummint politician apologizes to anyone on behalf of my sex, race, religion, class, street, town, state, region, or country, you can take it for a fact that I'm not to be included. I ain't apologizing for nuthin'! Not even for bad grammar and questionable spelling, damnit! You had a great, great grandfather who was stuck in the hold of a slaver ship, dragged to the south and sold to Strom Thurmond (he's that old..it coulda happened!) to work on a cotton farm? Tough! It' ain't you working the farm...get over it! Had an ancestor in Palestine that was run through sixty or seventy times by the sword of a filthy European Christian warrior? Suck it up! You ain't the one bleeding! You're an American Indian and had ancestors in the New England area that died from the smallpox or pilgrim muskets and were driven from their tribal lands? Figure that when I go to Foxwoods or the Mohegan Sun casinos in Connecticut, you're getting the entire New England region back one quarter at a time.

Shit.

Look at that. Those whining, lip biting, apologetic bastids weeping more "Sorry"s than Milton Bradley got me to curse. They even got me to stick it in a paragraph all alone for added emphasis, for Fenris' sake.

Just for that, I'm gonna go make them really sorry.