Apologies Accepted

Blake McCoy: The News Becomes You

Blake McCoy was a TV news reporter who wayback about one year ago Tweeted (and because it's Twitter, you know there is gonna be an issue) that obese people shouldn't be prioritized for vaccines.  He felt that the priority should go to all essential workers like health care workers and newscasters.  He got some heat and apologized 3 hours later, deleting the tweet and then eventually his social media accounts.  He was suspended from his job, later to be terminated.

Was his apology sincere or self-serving?  We take a bite out of this story and chew on it ok I will stop...we don't do any of those things, but we do have some fun rating the apology and considering the big question: was it ever cool to be fat?

Santa Monica: Paved Over Paradise

In the 1960s, during the time of peace love and groovy, the City of Santa Monica forced an entire community of People of Color to move so that a freeway could be built to allow more (whiter) people direct access to the beach.  Santa Monica had been home to a thriving community of black business owners, homeowners, and renters.  The first freed black man to register to vote in California (looking at you 1880!) lived in Santa Monica, and the first black professional-amateur surfer (hello 1920!) also came from Santa Monica.  Regardless of the heritage or the history, the City of Santa Monica used eminent domain as the legal justification for disrupting the lives and livelihoods of several hundred residents, all in the name of progress.  But now it's all OK because Santa Monica is offering the descendants (and some surviving former residents) first place in line for affordable housing back in Santa Monica!

Covid Update: Theo's fine.  It was negative.

Dash for Cash: Playing on Thin Ice

Teachers are America's heroes.  They work hard and are largely undervalued for the important role they play.  An ice hockey (is all hockey played on ice?) team decided to honor some teachers by inviting them to apply for a half-time "Dash for Cash."  The idea was simple: put a bunch of teachers together around a big pile of dollar bills and let the fun begin!  Teachers got to keep the cash and use it in their classrooms because America really values public education.  A video clip of the Dash for Cash made its way onto the internet and The Sioux Falls Stampede hockey (ice hockey?) team found itself explaining to the angry mobs on the internet that no, no they weren't humiliating teachers making them crawl around after dollar bills for entertainment...they were trying to get money to teachers and do good in the community.

The Stampede ice hockey team issued some additional checks - and an apology.  Angry internet mobs get stuff done!  If you want to help get some stuff done, send some money to Adopt A Classroom (dot org).  That's www.adoptaclassroom.org and earn some good karma by way of a donation.  Careful listeners will note the karma joke from the episode gets played out in the show description!

MetaPod: The Interview

It's our annual bonus episode!  Apologies Accepted is the guest podcast this week on MetaPod.  Catch Juliette and Theo in their first recorded interview as they talk about the show and all things apology.  MetaPod introduces listeners to new and different podcasts from across the world (which is round and contains more countries than just Los Angeles and San Francisco as Theo has recently learned!).  Listen in as they answer questions from MetaPod's golden-voiced hosts, Wendy and Kevin.

Black Pete: Christmas Culture Clash

It's our Christmas episode.  Christmaschristmaschristmaschristmaschristmaschristmaschristmas.  We love it - the lights, the music, the cookies, the racist caricatures!  Ah, Christmas - the yuletide celebration that brings the world closer together.  A lovely time of year when we ask ourselves the eternal questions like: what is the meaning behind a black man dressed for a renaissance fair who has curly black hair and red red lips and puts children in a sack and beats them with a stick while taking them away to work in Spain. The meaning, in the Netherlands, is Christmas.  What a fun jolly time of year, and what a fun jolly sidekick-servant-slave-companion for St. Nicholas to have, a colorfully dressed black man who punishes naughty children by forcing them to work (for free) in Santa's toy shop in Spain.

Listen, we get it.  Black Pete is racist.  But some Dutch people don't think so, they will argue with you, they will scream at you from their windmill houses, shaking their fists while throwing tulips and wooden shoes at you...be warned, the dutch are tolerant but that doesn't mean they will tolerate you talking smack about their beloved Zwarte Piet.  He's been around for 150 years and comes from a children's story book and you Americans have Rudolph and Frosty and your Santa is fat like all Americans and shame on you for your history! Go drink some coca-cola and celebrate capitalism, you Americans!

Christmas gets ugly this year as we turn our attention to Dutch Delicious, a bakery in Edmonton (hello, Canada!) that thought it would be fun to share their Dutch cultural Christmas tradition of Black Pete with Canadians.  They weren't prepared for the backlash and quickly offered an apology and a new version of Black Pete, Chimney Pete - which leads us to ask another eternal question: will our listeners in the Netherlands ever forgive us for the windmill houses and throwing tulip jokes?

Better.com: Better Just Got Worse.com

Business rule #1 is donut mess with the cops (it’s a pun! And episode 43!).  Business rule #2 is don’t lay-off 900 people as if you were sad about having to take out the garbage and then go on an anonymous chat board to say people deserved it.  Vishal Garg (not a Smurf) didn’t know about rule #2, or chose not to follow it because the rules don’t apply to him.  Either way, he laid off 900 people on a Zoom call, told them how sad he was, and then promptly bricked all their laptops and left them to wallow alone in shock and fear.  Just another day in the office for Vishal, according to some co-workers and some former business partners.

He apologized for his “poor execution” of the Zoom Boom ™ but is he actually sorry for laying off 900 people on a Zoom call?  He probably is, now that the business world has his photo up in every HR department as a reminder that empathy, not apathy, is the best way to crush someone’s soul under your boot when you lay them off during the holiday season.

Alice Sebold: Convicted Until Proven Innocent

Alice Sebold misidentified a man as a rapist and that man spent 16 years wrongfully imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit.  She wrote a memoir about the rape and the trial of the man she believed assaulted her. The memoir was a huge bestseller and she went on to literary fame, writing several novels to both critical and commercial success.  Recently her memoir was in production to become a film when one of the executive producers noticed some things in the trial that didn’t quite add up.  He hired a retired police detective who, in only 48 hours (that’s 2 days) discovered evidence that fully exonerated the man mistakenly accused of rape.

Released from jail in 1998, Mr. Broadwater spent years listed as a sex-offender, unable to secure solid employment, a social outcast with few friends. His life after prison is simply a series of contrasts between what might have been and what is, robbed of opportunities by a chance unlucky encounter with a woman on the street and the US judicial system.

Alice herself also had a chance unlucky encounter with the US judicial system.  The prosecutors lied to her, gave her false information that she believed.  Now that we know that Mr. Broadwater was innocent, wrongfully identified and convicted, we have an apology from Alice for mistakenly accusing him.  How do you apologize for being a part of a system that wrongfully punished an innocent person?  How much responsibility does she bear for her role?

Never fear, we are here with the answers (and chicken and d*ck jokes, too)!

Baby Jesus: Away With the Manger

Russ and Phylis have been victims of Christmas pranksters since 2016.  One year the baby Jesus was stolen out of their nativity scene, later returned thanks to the miracle of faith and a very passive aggressive 3-foot-tall sign that Phylis posted on the front lawn.  Another year baby Jesus was stolen and never returned.  In 2019 the merry pranksters struck again, stealing the entire nativity scene…only to return it a few days later with a note of apology (surely returned thanks again to the miracle of faith and yet another giant passive aggressive note signed by Phylis).

 

We’re here to rate the apology note the thieves left behind and explore the mystery of the nativity: how accurate is our modern day understanding of the birth of the baby Jesus?  What about the Wise Men, or the animals in the manger, or even the year and day of the birth?  What is true and what is fiction? We take a deep dive into first century Christianity and all the things around the two completely different birth narratives found in the Bible.

 

Note from Phylis: Do not listen to these two heathens discuss my nativity set or any of the words they can muster out of their mouths. (Note on the note: please note this is not an actual note from Phylis).

Charlie Brown: Guess Who is Coming to Dinner

Snoopy is cooking Thanksgiving dinner and everyone is invited!  Jellybeans and toast for all - including Franklin, the only black kid in the world of Charlie Brown and Peanuts!  Franklin gets a seat at the table all by himself as the other kids crowd around the opposite side of the table.  Some people see this moment in the show as emblematic of the black experience in America: included but excluded at the same time.  Other people see this as Franklin getting a place of honor: by sitting alone he stands out amidst all the chaos of a dog and bird cooking and serving everyone dinner.  Some people see racism, some see cartoon fun, but everyone can agree that a dog and a bird shouldn’t have to do all the work while a bunch of kids sit around and complain about the food.

 

What is Thanksgiving, where does it come from, what’s the fact vs. fiction in the history of Thanksgiving?  And what about Snoopy – is there racism going on and is there an actual apology being made by anyone for Franklin sitting all alone at a table crowded with white friends?

 

Get ready to dish (sorry) about the tasteful (sorry) history of Franklin, his first appearance, his meaning and importance in the world of Peanuts (sorry and yes, we’re using it as a food pun), and the sweet (sorry) teacher from Los Angeles who helped flavor (sorry) his creation.

Paris Hilton: The Role of a Lifetime

In the early 2000s, Paris Hilton was seen as a joke.  She was a dumb spoiled rich girl, and it seemed as if the media was forcing her upon the world for. No. Good. Reason.  When a private video tape was released, the public largely said she deserved what she got – and maybe she was even using the video to get more famous.  Either way it was somehow all her fault.  Few people felt sorry for Paris.  She was a target for ridicule of comedians and the media.  To protect herself, she played a character in public, a dumb blonde who somehow remained on everyone’s radar through her antics and her lifestyle.

Today we understand things differently.  In hindsight we can see that Paris was a victim, not only of betrayal by a boyfriend but also of needless cruelty from the public.  One of the comedians who made fun of Paris in 2007 has come forward with a public apology and we're here to help rate the apology (and the joke!) as we all learn (hundreds of millions of dollars later) that while Paris Hilton may have suffered trauma, she is nobody’s fool.