Apologies Accepted

Encore! Halloween: Babies Stealing Your Candy

It's Halloweeeeeeeen!  And our encore holiday episode celebrating candy and the commercialization of the spooky season!

In these strange times we take you back to the more innocent days of childhood.  Stealing a bowlful of Halloween candy from your neighbor’s porch seems like a gentler crime from gentler days…but there is a social contract involved!  You aren’t allowed to trick anyone who has left you a treat.  That’s the rule.  So once you are found out, you’d better apologize.  We walk through the history of Halloween, how it took root in America, and what grew out of it that lead to a child in Wisconsin breaking with tradition and stealing all the candy from a neighbor's porch!

What other social contracts are being violated?  Regulations around our national food supply?  A short but rousing vegetarian approved sidebar that may just make you choose a salad for lunch.  Or maybe KFC really is the only thing standing between your eyeball and a hungry chicken?

Note: discussion of a public shooting begins the episode.

Encore! Haunted Hoochie: It’s Not What You Think

It's a Halloween Encore Episode!  We will be back live in two weeks.

A hoochie is another name for a shack.  Merriam Webster doesn't know this and will tell you that a hoochie is a "sexually promiscuous young woman" (like that's a bad thing).  But the Oxford English Dictionary thinks that a hoochie is a WWII reference for a "lean-to" or a temporary shelter.  So, let's go with shack because OED is a more authoritative source than judgey Merriam Webster.  A Haunted Hoochie is therefore a haunted house and the most famous of all Haunted Hoochies is The Haunted Hoochie located in Pataskala, Ohio.  It's a family run Haunted House attraction and for 28 years running Haunted Hoochie celebrated "Swastika Saturday" - an event meant to make fun of Nazis, not to celebrate them.  But that distinction wasn't so clear in October of 2018 after a gunman opened fire in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, killing 11 innocent people.  Haunted Hoochie took a lot of criticism for holding their Swastika-Saturday-Not-a-Celebration-Event on the same day as the shooting.

Haunted Hoochie came out with an apology, which wasn't so great and didn't help things.  So they did what all reasonable people do when their first apology doesn't stand a ghost of a chance, they apologized again, hoping this time to settle the matter once and for all.

Hoochie  derivation: We love you, OED, but somehow Hooch (for booze) has got to be involved so we at Apologies Accepted say thank you for the praise and prizes you are going to heap upon us for discovering that boozy and floozy go with hooch and hoochie.  You are welcome.

Encore! Revenge Porn: The Naked Weatherman

It's an encore episode!  Juliette is in Sweden and Theo isn't and is pretty mad about it. 

Spectrum News provides a local cable news channel for every city with Spectrum Cable. It's rarely hard-hitting news and leans more towards inoffensive local stories about kittens in trees.  It would be the news channel for barbie dolls if they watched news.  Local Spectrum News channel 1 in NYC became an exception to that policy when they quietly fired Eric Adame, the local fan favorite weatherman on Channel 1.  They fired him for engaging in online sex in a private sex-webcam-chat-porn-site.  This wasn't an Only Fans account, it was a subscribers only adult web-cam-chat service and Eric was chatting in the privacy of his own home during his off hours.  Spectrum Channel 1 might have had a real reason to fire Eric if he had been inappropriate while reporting, but his clothes always stayed on when he was reporting the weather.

Someone, unknown and anonymous, took photos of Eric without his consent while he was naked online.  This unknown person sent those photos to Eric's boss and to Eric's mother.  Eric is a textbook case of revenge porn and is suing the webcam company for the name of the person who sent the photos.  He intends to file legal action against the person who took the photos.

Eric apologized to his fans, his boss, his co-workers, all of New York City, and the weather itself.  None of that mattered to Spectrum.  They fired him for whatever legal reason they could find to justify the firing and now no one knows what the weather is in New York City.

But everyone knows that Eric was fired unfairly and lost his right to privacy.

Justin Trudeau: Nazi in Parliament

It's our 150th Episode and what better way to honor the occasion than with a story about Nazis!  The Canadian Parliament honored a 98 year old World War II veteran in September 2023.  He received a standing ovation for his service during the war.  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was in attendance and joined the applause.

Now Vladimir Putin is applauding because it turned out that the 98 year old WWII veteran fought on the wrong side of the war.  He is a former Nazi soldier. This faux pas plays right into Putin's narrative about Ukraine being a Nazi controlled state.  Trudeau apologized but is Prime Minster McDreamy's apology good enough to make amends for one of the stupidest political gaffs in Canadian history?

Lauren Boebert: Girls Night Out

Lauren Boba Fett was sent to congress by Colorado's 3rd District for a second term because 546 people wanted the rest of the US to see how dumb she was.  They didn't want to hog all the stupidity for themselves and thought the national stage was the best place to showcase her world class idiocy.  Thanks, Colorado's 3rd district, the following is all your fault -

Lauren went on a date to a family friendly musical theater production of "Beetlejuice."  She sang, she danced in her chair, and she had a good time as a private citizen in a public space.  She decided to party it on up and brought out the vape pen and then engaged in some sexual over the clothes petting with her boyfriend during the show.  True, he started it by juggling her breasts but she took things up a notch, or down a notch, way down, and gave him a crotch massage.  Not sure how many children were around in the theater to see this behavior, but by now every child in America can see it thanks to the internet.

Lauren was thrown out of the theater.  Her PR team spun the incident and lied and lied and lied and lied about what happened.  Video was released which showed her doing everything her team said she didn't do.  Lauren vaped out an apology blaming cameras and her very public divorce and her boyfriend's party affiliation (he's a democrat with no taste).

Colorado has yet to apologize but we anticipate a big "we are sorry" in 2024.  Political hopefuls are already campaigning against her and who knows, Colorado's 3rd district may elect a pony this time just to prove they can.

Child Labor: Child’s Play is not for Children

Hi everyone!  It's a two week vacation while Juliette travels and Theo moves and we're rereleasing one of our classic episodes about child labor!

It's an open secret that children work for next to nothing and don't complain a lot.  That's why they make great workers, only it's kind of illegal in a lot of countries to employ children.  But don't worry because corporations have found the wonder of willful ignorance and plausible deniability, two factors that mean they can hire companies that in turn hire other companies that hire subcontractors who hire kids (and sometimes buy them) to work in factories, fields, and mines.

Tang Mingfang, a factory worker in China, noticed that FoxConn, his employer, had hired a lot of kids.  He was told the kids were having fun working as interns and learning all about how to make Amazon's popular Alexa, Echo Dot, and Kindle devices.  He was also told to shut his mouth and get back to work.  Tang decided to report the child labor violations and was sent to jail for two years.  He was beaten and imprisoned for reporting a crime against children.  He's out of jail now and has asked Amazon for an apology.

Jeff Bezos personally apologized from space and we are here to thank him for being such a hero.  OK, that didn't happen.  Plausible deniability means that one of the richest men on the planet also has to pretend he's one of the dumbest.

But it's not all evil billionaires and child workers, there are some real heroes of note in this episode!

Brazilian Barbie: Racist Beauty Standards

Maria da Graça Xuxa Meneghel, Xuxa for short, is a world famous entertainer, singer, model, and businesswoman.  She's worth over $300 million dollars thanks to her talents and it all started thanks to her looks.  She was (and still is) beautiful.  Tall, thin, blond, and white, she not only met the beauty standard, she raised it.  People called her the Barbie of Brazil and her fans around the world adored her for her beauty and charm.

Recently Xuxa issued an apology for being used by corporations and the entertainment industry to reinforce racialized beauty standards.  Brazil is a country filled with people of many colors, but on Xuxa's show everyone was white.  Over the years Xuxa has realized that not only was she used to reinforce a racialized beauty standard, but that she inadvertently contributed to making non-white unbeautiful people feel bad about themselves.  She's take it all back if she could, but she's keeping the money!

Is Xuxa really sorry, or is this a chance to grab some headlines now that the Barbie movie is set to become the top grossing box office film of all time? 

Medical Assistance in Dying: Maid to Order

Kathrin Mentler wasn't in a good space and went to Vancouver General Hospital to get some help. She'd been thinking about harming herself and the doctor asked if she had ever considered asking for medical assistance in dying.  MAID is a program in Canada that allows terminally ill people the option of dying in a controlled environment.  

Kathrin was shocked.  She had come to the hospital for help in staying alive, not help in planning her death.  To think that death was being offered as a choice along with aspirin and bed rest seemed not only uncaring but also defeatist.  The hospital offered an apology, along with an explanation that shows health care systems worldwide are all a bit messed up.

Megan Thee Stallion: Off Like A Shot

You know who she is so you don't need the backstory!  She is a hip hop artist who seemingly overnight was recording duets with Beyonce and Beyonce (seriously what other artist do you need after Queen B?).  And then she was famously shot in the foot and the entire world had something to say about it.  Megan is now accused of being a liar, called a hero, a prime example of misogynor, the imperfect black woman victim, a champion for truth - her story has been twisted by anyone with a hand to twist - but what really happened and why did it happen?

Tory Lanez is the artist found guilty of shooting her and he has something to say about his innocence and how you don't understand that he couldn't have shot that gun - he's Canadian and Canadians don't shoot people so he's not apologizing!  Except he kind of did sort of maybe and we're here to rate the apology and offer guidance to his PR team - don't let your clients on social media or pay phones from jail!

Miranda Sings: The Sorry Song

Miranda is a character created by comedic actress Colleen Ballinger.  For a hot minute in the pre 2010s Miranda was all over YouTube and had a army of adoring fans. Miranda is oblivious to her lack of talent and her entire life is dedicated to becoming a star.  But while Miranda's dreams never left her bedroom, Colleen's dreams took her to Netflix for her own Miranda special, around the world performing before live audiences, and across the internet, smashing subscription numbers and raking in the dough.

Most of Miranda/Colleen's fans were teenagers, and it seems Colleen forgot that 14 year olds aren't really equipped to hear about your divorce or participate in adult conversations of any sort.  Colleen treated her fans like friends, and allowed some fans to become super close.  Which later created problems when some of those fans called out Colleen's lack of judgement and inappropriate behavior towards minors.

So Colleen started to get some negativity online and decided to answer the world's judgement with a song.  An apology song!  And since we are the Billboard Magazine of apologies, we decided to see where this song ranks on the charts.  Colleen sure is talented, but is she a good apologizer?