Almost immediately, someone inside the club worked out what a United 93 shirt looks like on the 25th anniversary of 9/11. The range and the posts promoting it were gone within two hours. That should have been the end of it.
It wasn’t. A week later, the club was being roasted on CNN, ESPN, and the Washington Post and had issued a full confession. The shirts “should not have reached the point of sale and we take full responsibility for not undertaking proper due diligence.” Again, nobody suggested any of this was deliberate. And again, the mistake was fixed within hours. But still an apology was required.
Then there is Ed Sheeran
On Saturday night, Sheeran delivered the most extreme entry in this new genre: an apology for something he demonstrably did not do.
In Philadelphia, before playing a note, he stood in front of 60,000 people and said, “I am making mistakes and I’m so, so sorry.”
He was apologizing for a rapper’s politics, a stadium owner’s ban, and a promoter’s decision, none of which were his, to an audience that just wanted to hear Shape of You.
A man who has spent his career steering clear of every political issue going found himself in the middle of the most intractable one on earth. Through no fault of his own he found himself apologizing.
We have reached a very low point. The combination of crisis management, the fragmentation of culture and the insidious effects of social media have turned this decade into an unpleasant, sanctimonious place. Where the only option for innocent people is to eat humble pie with a double serving of reputational rescue slathered on top.
Converse set out to offend no one, and when it did, it made amends the same day. Oxford United made an awful accidental mistake and fixed it immediately, then apologised anyway. Ed Sheeran just wants to play music but must first apologize for things he did not do and does not understand.
I fully expect this column to incur similar wrath from the sanctimonious corners of the internet where offence is easily taken and blame must then be immediately apportioned.
Real harm, deliberately done, deserves an apology and consequences, and brands that drag their feet deserve everything they get. A mistake with no intent behind it deserves a correction. That’s all.
“We’ve withdrawn it” is a complete sentence. It does not need “we understand.” It does not need “we’ll do better.” It just requires everyone to calm down.
