{"id":1001,"date":"2023-05-25T19:57:56","date_gmt":"2023-05-25T23:57:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/?p=1001"},"modified":"2023-05-25T19:57:56","modified_gmt":"2023-05-25T23:57:56","slug":"schembechler-apology-falls-a-little-short","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/2023\/05\/schembechler-apology-falls-a-little-short\/","title":{"rendered":"Schembechler Apology Falls a Little Short"},"content":{"rendered":"

Only three days after he was hired, Glenn Schembechler resigned Saturday<\/a> as assistant director of recruiting for the University of Michigan football team. Football fans discovered and were appalled by some of Mr. Schembechler\u2019s \u201clikes\u201d and re-tweets on his Twitter account, including racist posts as well as support of the January 6, 2021, invasion of the Capitol.<\/p>\n

In one portion of his apology statement<\/a>, Mr. Schembechler said, \u201cMy sincerest apologies, again and profusely, to anyone that I have offended \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the statement was issued through a public relations firm, it misses one of the cardinal elements of a good apology: take responsibility. The phrase, \u201cto anyone I\u2019ve offended\u201d sounds too much like, \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t have been offended, and if you were, it\u2019s your problem.\u201d It implies that he doesn\u2019t know whether he offended anyone \u2013 but the storm of fans complaining about his social media posts indicates there were plenty of people who were \u201coffended.\u201d Why not substitute \u201ceveryone\u201d for \u201canyone\u201d? \u00a0Or better yet, \u201cI realize that my comments were offensive and have hurt many.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pointing out that \u201cwe have all made mistakes\u201d also doesn\u2019t have a place in a sincere apology. That\u2019s for his listeners to note, not him.<\/p>\n

Other parts of his apology were good, including the straight-up admission, \u201cI was wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which all goes to show, once again, that it\u2019s tough to make a good public apology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Only three days after he was hired, Glenn Schembechler resigned Saturday as assistant director of recruiting for the University of Michigan football team. Football fans discovered and were appalled by some of Mr. Schembechler\u2019s \u201clikes\u201d and re-tweets on his Twitter account, including racist posts as well as support of the January 6, 2021, invasion of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apologies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1001"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1002,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001\/revisions\/1002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}