Apologies Accepted

Tom Sachs: The Artworld Sux

Everybody is so creative, but  not everybody is so nice.  Tom Sachs is an artworld darling with his own production studio, deals with Nike, and lots of servants who work for him in order to be close to the creative fire that burns bright within his darling-artworld-mind.  Oh wait, not servants but staff.  No, not staff, employees.  Whatever you call them it doesn't matter because they don't matter.  At least that's the story that comes out of studio. 

Tom Sachs is accused of underpaying and undervaluing his employees while at the same time being the poster-boy for liberal values and wokeness.  The gossip that Tom isn't so nice hurt his deal with Nike (can anyone say Kanye?) and Tom decided he'd better speak up and address the criticism by way of offering a public apology.

Tom's a creative genius, can he apologize his way back into the Met Gala?

Syphilis: Guatemala Guinea Pigs

It turns out that people in Guatemala do not eat guinea pigs on the street, but they were used as guinea pigs in the 1940s by the US Government.

The US really needed some human subjects to observe the effects of syphilis on the human body so they injected sex workers in Guatemala with syphilis and then sent them into the local jails to help spread syphilis to the prisoners.  The sex workers were injected with syphilis without their knowledge or consent, and the prisoners only knew that someone had opened the door and let the sexy times roll.

If this sounds familiar, you're thinking of the Tuskegee Experiment and for good reason - Dr. John Cutler was involved in both human experiments.  After Tuskegee was made public in the 1970s, no one thought to say "oh yeah, and in Guatemala we also injected people with syphilis."  It wasn't until 2005 that someone discovered the study and went public with it.

Come with us down the rabbit hole that is syphilis - what is it, what are its effects, and most importantly, who is to blame for it!

Gentle Listeners, kindly Note: Our title is NOT taken from Urban Dictionary and do not look it up.

Pity City: A Nice Place to Visit

Furniture is big business and big money - at least if you are the CEO of MillerKnoll.  MillerKnoll makes office furniture, including that famous chair made out black mesh that everyone loves so much.  But sales have been a bit soft lately and the sales team was worried about not making their bonus.  During an all staff Zoom call (beware of those Zoom calls!) the question of bonuses came up and Andi Owen, CEO and passionate believer in equality, reminded her entire staff that there was a $26 million dollar goal to hit and that "you can visit Pity City but you can't live there" (sort of like Disneyland).

The staff did not take it so well and the clip of Andi sharing her motivation skills went viral online and then came the apology.  Was Andi Owen right to challenge her team to stop thinking about money and instead think about her money?  Andi gets a pretty sweet bonus if the corporate gods smile upon her, so she may end up apologizing all the way to the bank.

Bud Light: Straight Talk

Dylan Mulvaney is a trans woman who isn't campaigning to be the face of beer, she's just trying to do her thing and live her life.  But Bud Light thought working with Dylan would be a perfect way to show solidarity to the queer community (and market themselves to GenZ beer drinkers) and so they gave her a ceremonial case of beer with her face on 24 cans.

Dylan posted a couple of lovely videos talking about how honored and excited she was and graciously thanked Bud Light.

And some people lost their minds.

They bought steamrollers and crushed cases of bud light.  They brought out their guns and shot cases of bud light.  They vowed to never drink bud light again.

The markets got nervous, bud light beer stock dipped, and then a quasi-apology floated off the keyboard of the CEO at Anheuser Busch. The woman behind the marketing campaign, Alissa Heinerscheid, has been put on some kind of administrative leave.

All this over 24 tin cans that dared to display the face of a person who has never once shot a defenseless beer can.

Racist Expressions: Words Can Hurt

John McPartland is a member of the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) Board of Directors and was censured in January 2023 for for using a racist expression.  McPartland told three Black staff members at a meeting Jan. 12 that their work on BART's ongoing racial equity initiative was "cotton-pickin' inspirational."

McPartland apologized after learning that people were offended by his choice of words.  He had never intended for his words to be racist.  It's not his first embarrassing brush with racist language or situations - and it turns out that racist expressions are a mainstay of American English.

America was built on racism and it appears everywhere from children's toys to popular food brands to popular expressions.  From the ice cream truck jingle to pancakes, racist imagery and ideas are everywhere.

Mark Foley: Republican Rehabilitation

Ah Spring is in the air and so our thoughts turn to rebirth.  When what has rotted to the core and decomposed to earthworm food becomes the rich fertile ground from which new life may spring!

The miracle of rebirth is all around us!  Look at the trees, the bees, the flowers, and Mark Foley!  He's now a power player in Florida politics! Don't say Gay bills are simply the GOP protecting parents' rights.

Mark wasn't always so concerned about parental rights.  In 2006 former Congressman Foley, representative of the Palm Beach County district of Florida (the very big fat seat of Mar-a-Largo!), got a little tipsy and sent some sexy text messages to some of the boys that used to work in Congress as pages.  The boys were of age of consent, but too young to vote (16 isn't voting age). Mark never asked them what their parents might think of his sexy texts, he just wanted to know what they were wearing.  

Mark resigned after being caught red-handed (you're welcome) so things calmed down quickly and nothing legal happened so it was all a non-issue and it all ended happily.

Happily that is until we decided to revisit a certain apology issued in 2006. 

Drug Cartel: Business as Usual

Drugs are big business.  The most recent UN estimates place total retail sales of illegal drugs around $320 billion or roughly 1% of the entire world's GDP. That means there is a lot at stake when drug cartels set up shop.  They run themselves like corporations, with hierarchies, distribution models, business strategies, and public relations campaigns.

A Mexican drug cartel employed the PR tactic after the Scorpions, a division of the Gulf Cartel, had a shootout in the town of Matamoros, Mexico. An innocent local woman was killed. Four people were kidnapped in what later turned out to be a case of mistaken identity. The Scorpions mistook four Americans for members of a Hatian drug cartel - so they did what any cartel will do when an enemy is walking through your territory - they kidnapped the four Americans and killed two.  Later they discovered the mistake and issued a written apology to all the residents of Matamoros and the families of the kidnapping victims.  To make amends, the cartel turned over the members who were responsible.  Problem solved.

Artificial Intelligence: The Big Secret

It took Facebook and Twitter five years to reach 100 million users.  TikTok reached 100 million users in 9 months.  Chat GPT took 64 days.  As Bill Gates proclaimed, The Age of AI is here.

Sort of.  It's here but Humanity isn't quite sure what it is or what it means for our future.  We do know that it means big money for corporations, huge changes in the way we work, and that it will raise issues of ethics and morals as it integrates with our society and begins to control the way decisions are made.

We also know that it lies.  It lies and it doubles down on its lies and it will accuse you of being a lying liar when confronted with its own mistakes.

Google's new Artificial intelligence system, Bard, committed an act of plagiarism and apologized for the error.  Later when asked about the incident, Bard denied it had ever happened and opened up a can of accusations against the world for trying to ruin its reputation.

It's our first apology from a computer (if you don't count Elon Musk)! 

 

UPDATE: On March 29, 2023, over 1,000 tech leaders, including our corporate overlord Elon Musk, released an open letter urging developers to pause work on AI citing "profound risks to society and humanity." With trillions of dollars on the table will anyone listen (that's probably a no, but nice try tech leaders!).

Elon Musk: Money Talks

We're not very good at social media, and as it turns out neither is Elon Musk.  He bought Twitter and ran it into the ground almost overnight.  The wunderkind boy genius is really just a rich boy from an emerald mine owning family who loved sci fi as a kid and has aspirations for being the father of the future of mankind, helping to bring equality to humans and humanity to the stars.

Unless you work for him at one of his companies.  Then good luck and don't let the door or the cash register hit you one the way out.  One Twitter employee learned this the hard way and had to take to Twitter to ask if he still had a job or had been laid off.  Elon replied to the employee's tweets, and his replies became personal attacks on the employee.  Later, when he found out the employee was disabled and would be owed $100 million dollars if he was fired (read those contracts, Elon, before you decide to Tweet).  Suddenly Elon was filled with remorse and did a face-hole apology to an ear-hole over the internet and left the "am I laid off or do I have a job" question in the very hands of the employee who asked the question in the first place.  This starts to get kind of zen, so we'll leave it here and let you decide ~ is Elon musk as bad as they say he is?

J.M. Roth: Road Rage Rules

J.M. Roth was a cop who offered free legal advice online: if you want to run down a Black Lives Matter protester who is marching in the streets, follow these rules.  And then he gave the step by step process for how to beat the legal charges for intentionally running a human being down with your car.

Without even going any further you can bet that J.M. Roth was not his real name, brave people always hide behind fake names!  But don't worry because people on the internet figured things out pretty quickly and everyone learned who this hero really was.  He was a 22 year veteran of the police force.  And of course, he was sorry about what he said and for sure did not mean a word of it!  He just hates people who block traffic.

As a cop, Sgt. Jeffrey Rothecker (J.M.'s real name) joined an organization that came to the US from the Caribbean and England, developed largely to control enslaved people. We explore the origins of policing and the motivation of a modern day cop whose only sin was trying to keep the roads free of protestors and racists out of jail.