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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