Confession in a Culture Allergic to Vulnerability
Part 3 of the Lenten Series: The Season We'd Rather Skip
Nobody apologizes anymore. I don’t mean the Instagram story apology or the Notes app statement crafted by a publicist or the tearful press conference where someone reads from a script about how they’re going to “do the work” and then disappears for six weeks before launching a comeback tour. I mean actual apology. The kind where a person looks another person in the eye and says I was wrong and I’m sorry and I have no excuse. That kind of apology has become so rare in American public life that when it actually happens it makes the news. We literally do not know what to do when someone tells the truth about themselves without being forced into it.
I mean you know this. Watch what happens every time a politician or public figure gets caught in a lie or a scandal or a moral failure. The playbook is so predictable at this point. First comes the denial. Then comes the deflection. Then comes the counterattack where somehow the person who did the…