{"id":584,"date":"2018-07-19T11:47:01","date_gmt":"2018-07-19T15:47:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/?p=584"},"modified":"2021-04-19T16:01:05","modified_gmt":"2021-04-19T20:01:05","slug":"584","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/2018\/07\/584\/","title":{"rendered":"A Look at the Elon Musk Apology"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Elon Musk <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2018\/07\/18\/630130125\/elon-musk-apologizes-to-diver-in-cave-rescue-for-words-spoken-in-anger\">apologized yesterday<\/a> for accusing a British cave diver of being a pedophile. The diver, Vern Unsworth, is one of the heroes who assisted the Thai boys trapped in a cave the last couple weeks. Musk had offered to bring his mini-submarine to the cave site, confident it would assist in rescuing the trapped boys; Unsworth apparently didn&#8217;t think it would be helpful, and the two exchanged mean tweets. Musk tweeted last Saturday that Unsworth was likely a pedophile, and he decided yesterday to apologize for that:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">&#8220;His actions against me do not justify my actions against him, and for that I apologize to Mr. Unsworth and to the companies I represent as leader. The fault is mine and mine alone.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The good parts of this apology:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Mr. Musk is taking responsibility here, especially with the line about it being solely his fault.<\/li>\n<li>He&#8217;s addressing not just his immediate &#8220;victim&#8221; but the secondary ring of people who were offended, namely, his companies&#8217; employees and investors. (USA Today reported that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/world\/2018\/07\/18\/elon-musk-apologizes-thai-cave-rescue-diver\/794873002\/\">Tesla shares fell<\/a> after Musk&#8217;s attack on Unsworth.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The not-so-good parts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It isn&#8217;t exactly clear what he is apologizing for. He says simply, &#8220;my actions.&#8221; Accusing someone publicly of being a pedophile is defamatory &#8212; serious stuff. A vague phrase like &#8220;my actions&#8221; leaves listeners wondering whether he really knows what he did that was so offensive.<\/li>\n<li>He just couldn&#8217;t resist the temptation to shoot an(other) arrow at his &#8220;victim&#8221; in his attempt at an apology. Any aspect of blame-shifting usually undermines the sincerity of an apology. Mr. Unsworth said some nasty things to\/about Mr. Musk too, but the initial apology is not the place to point that out. It would&#8217;ve been better if Mr. Musk had simply said, &#8220;There is no way to justify the terrible thing I said of him.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Elon Musk apologized yesterday for accusing a British cave diver of being a pedophile. The diver, Vern Unsworth, is one of the heroes who assisted the Thai boys trapped in a cave the last couple weeks. Musk had offered to bring his mini-submarine to the cave site, confident it would assist in rescuing the trapped [&hellip;]<\/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-584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apologies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584","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=584"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":587,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/584\/revisions\/587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abfifer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}