In 2017 five women accused Louis C.K
of sexual misconduct.
He issued an apology in the New York Times.
Compared to others caught in the
#MeToo era, he seemed genuinely contrite for
having hurt anyone.
But just one year, later audio from CK's new
stand-up routine leaked.
He raged against political correctness.
He no longer appeared remorseful.
From "sorry" to a resounding
"not sorry."
When did the true sign of power shift
from responsibility to impunity?
An apology is an admission of guilt or
wrongdoing, taking responsibility for
something that you have done wrong. If
you look back in political life in
America you often see presidents for
example taking responsibility for kind
of national mistakes. John Kennedy
apologized for the Bay of Pigs.
You saw the same thing, relatively, with
Reagan and Iran Contra.
Essentially the buck stops here.
But lately we've experienced
more of the "sorry not sorry" approach.
A far cry from:
Humility in particular is a commodity that is really in short supply at this moment.
There's this sense that apology is being conflated with debasement
That in order to truly
apologize we have to humiliate or
degrade ourselves.
And that's not true in fact when we do
apologize it's been shown that we feel
stronger and more courageous and more
powerful.
I think a lot of people are not
wanting to admit culpability. They're not
wanting to admit guilt. We see that in
Joe Biden. Joe Biden in the summer of 2019
was accused by several women not of
anything sexual but of touching them in
public in ways that made them feel uncomfortable.
We heard a lot of "I'm sorry they're upset," but no admission of
anything that might have been wrong or
uncomfortable on his part.
Celebrities also use this
strategy even when it costs them work
Donald Trump does not like apologizing this is a very much part of his political persona and identity.
Trump learned from the lawyer
Roy Cohn who taught him to hit back
harder than he's been punched.
We are in this moment where politics is not just
about compromise and it's not just even
about leadership but it's also about
taking your team to a win and to a
victory
and I think Trump's refusal to apologize
really does speak to that moment.
When the leader of the free world takes an
anti-atonement stance that attitude
trickles down.
In politics we look to our
politicians not only for political
leadership but for leadership more
broadly. These are people who you know
either consciously or not model behavior
for the rest of us.
When you see
politicians who will not apologize who
will not engage in that act of humility
it sends a message to the rest of us
that we don't need to apologize either
What larger repercussions could this
have? Polls show we're losing confidence
in our political institutions and
without apologies we may also lose
accountability. A process that is already
complicated because we haven't found a
good way to deal with a whole spectrum
of bad behavior, from harassment to rape.
When famous people refuse to offer an apology
they're also preventing any future
conversation about restitution about
atonement about ways to make it up to
the victims in in whatever way the
victims deserve. If we can't make that
simple act of "I'm really sorry you
deserve better,"
then where are we as a society?
Louis CK had promised to listen and learn.
I think a lot of people would have been very
happy to forgive him and to use his case
as an example of how as a culture we can
think about atonement.
In the end he found it preferable to do the opposite.
He mocked.
He resented
He indulged his anger.
And his audiences cheered.
I'm Megan Garber thanks so much for
watching and if you'd like more videos
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