By Michael Caruso
In the great Larry David movie “Clear History,” he plays a disgraced marketing executive who, unsurprisingly, at various points in the story, creates drama for which he has to “apologize.” But, in Larry’s view, “Apologies don’t have to be sincere, it’s just the act of the apology itself. All that matters is if you’re acting sincere.”
As David’s readers know, a person’s “acceptance of responsibility” heavily influences the USSG guideline determination. The role of remorse at sentencing and a judge’s ability to accurately gauge a person’s remorse is an area of considerable debate. Professor Susan Blandes has written extensively on this subject. Her research demonstrates that there is currently no evidence that judges can accurately evaluate remorse in a courtroom. Conversely, she’s found evidence that race and other impermissible factors create hurdles to evaluating remorse.
Moreover, her article notes there is little evidence that remorse is correlated with future law-abiding behavior or other legitimate penal purposes. There is evidence, however, that remorse is often conflated with shame, which correlates with increased future criminality. More research is needed.
Recently, the phenomenal Havard history professor Jill Lepore wrote a review of a forthcoming book entitled Sorry, Sorry, Sorry: The Case for Good Apologies by Susan McCarthy and Marjorie Ingall. At SorryWatch.com and @SorryWatch, McCarthy and Ingall have been judging the adequacy of apologies and welcoming “suggestions for shaming” since 2012.
In her review, Lepore briefly traces the modern history of the apology. From 1665, she reproduces an apology for an unknown error: “I freely confesse, that I spake many words rashly, foolishly, & unadvisedly, of wch I am ashamed, & repent me of them, & desire all that tooke offence to forgive me.” She references Dave Chappelle, Alex Jones, and others for more recent events. And she offers an interesting contrast between a fictional character’s response to a prior forced apology: “I’m not some weak-kneed f****** crybaby that goes around f****** apologizing all the time,” he said, seething. “I’m done. I am done apologizing” with the actor’s real-life apology for an assault he committed: “You mess up. You own it. You learn from it.”
Ultimately, Lepore comes to this conclusion about our current state of affairs: “some very angry people very loudly demanding apologies while other very angry people demand the denunciation of the people who are demanding apologies. The fracture widens and hardens—fanatic, schismatic, idiotic. But another way of thinking about what a culture of forced, performed remorse has wrought is not, or not only, that it has elevated wrath and loathing but that it has demeaned sorrow, grief, and consolation. No apology can cover that crime, nor mend that loss.”
Me? I’m sorry for stuff I haven’t even done yet.
