But besides honing communication skills and maybe tune back his ego some (for the future), do you really think the whole situation (including his apology) would not have been vastly improved by consulting with someone knowledgeable in PR?
If you think his apology sounds sincere and is worded appropriately, or his Twitter activity since the fiasco, does (or has done) him any good, then I guess we disagree on this.
Say someone punches me and out of anger I stab him. I apologize for stabbing him. But I'm not going to say I was the bad guy unequivocally, because I wasn't. He punched me and he punched first. He's at least, like, 10% the bad guy. That doesn't mean my apology for stabbing him is insincere. I regret that part 100%. But it's not wrong for me to say "I still think he shouldn't have punched me" because otherwise it's like I'm admitting to stabbing him for no reason, which isn't true.
I get that one goal of an apology is to make amends to people who have been hurt/offended. Those people understandably want to see the apologizer grovel without hesitation. But humans have both a head and a heart, so shouldn't being accurate in one's apology be an equally important goal?
Not taking a side here either way. Just something I've noticed about the social expectations around apologies in general.
Not “I apologize for stabbing them BUT they started it”
The latter is just trying to justify and excuse the bad behavior and save face. A true apology shows remorse and that’s it.
Ok, but in the example that was given, it does justify it, a little bit.
It doesn't justify it completely, but I would absolutely have more empathy for someone who stabbed someone out of some amount of self defense, than I would for someone who stabbed someone for no reason.
Do you really believe, that in the stabbing example, someone who stabs someone, for literally no reason at all, is exactly the same as someone who did it, in response to being assaulted first?
You think these 2 actions are the same, or is it that 1 situation is probably not as bad?
Kindly take your sealioning elsewhere.
Ok, and in the situation of the stabbing/assault, you really think it would be unreasonable for someone to point out that they got attacked first?
That does not seem unreasonable. If someone got attacked, and then responded with too much force, it would still be reasonable to point out that someone got attacked first, while also saying that attacking back with too much force was bad.
In the case of someone getting attacked first, it is both OK to point that out, and also say that the response was over the top.
If you disagree then you are basically saying that attacking someone unprovoked is equivalently bad as to attacking someone in response to an attack.
And I am not sure why you don't recognize the importance of also pointing out that an attack was in response to another attack.
That seems pretty important to point out.
It is pretty reasonable to both recognize that something went too far, while also explaining that there was a cause to it, and that it was in response to another attack.
The lesson here is never apologize on the internet because that'll be thrown back in your face.