Discussion of "high-profile public apologies" reminds me of a species of non-apology particularly common of late among big-name politicians and other prominent people. It goes like this: "If anyone was offended," the big-name says, "then I apologize to them."
Leaving aside the offense to basic grammar, the key word to note here is "if." Its implication is clear: the speaker really can't imagine how anyone could be so idiotic/petty/politically correct as to misunderstand the humor/earthiness/wonderful honesty of whatever it was that the speaker said. That "if" throws the burden of proving the ill-intent of the statement in question right back onto whomever it was who complain in the first place. There's certainly no repentence here, and not even an actual apology.
So what gives?
Although I think the answer's been with us as long as humans walked upright, it's also nicely identified within the context of the Seven Deadly Sins. Remember them? Lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, anger, envy and pride.
My Catholic sources tell me the original list was compiled by Pope Gregory the Great 1,400 years ago and elaborated on by Thomas Aquinas seven centuries later. These days, we're likely to identify Lust as the most interesting (Freud casts a long shadow over the contemporary West). But there are worse offenders on the list, and the one that's at issue here is Pride. No, I'm not talking about a synonym for that familiar buzzword, "self-esteem" (whose meaning is very elastic), but something a good deal more dangerous, an affliction you can actually call sin because it cuts a chasm between one's self-righteous self, on one hand, and God and humanity, on the other. It's into that abyss that false or half-hearted apologies are casually tossed.
Repentance is another matter entirely. Sure, you can ask for public forgiveness for whatever transgression is at hand, but repentance amounts to personal transformation. In secular terms, it can be called "taking responsibility"--real responsibility and acting on it in a way that people recognize.
Funny thing, but I'm at a loss to come up with any recent examples of anything "high profile, public" that fits that kind of action. But I am old enough to remember the rather swift end to which the West German Chancellor Willy Brandt brought his stellar political career in April 1974. He had been Time's "Man of the Year" in 1970 and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971. Talk about food for the ego. But after German police revealed that one of the Brandt's closest aides was in fact an East German spy, the chancellor did not wait long. He took responsibility for the breach of state security and quit.
It may have seemed all the more impressive at the time because the event coincided with the latter stages of the long, slow deterioration of Richard Nixon's presidency under the revelations of Watergate. Nixon hung on for many months.
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