It once was that an apology was between two voluntary people and its purpose was to make the best of the situation for both parties. A true apology was based on the premise that a wrong had certainly been done, and there was no question that the injured party should be made to reinterpret the gaffe. Nowadays, third parties such as pundits bully the supposed aggressor into making a statement of apology to the supposed injured party, where more often than not the bully has imagined some substantial class of people for whom the apology must do multiple duty. Then the so-called dealer of the insult regards the opportunity as one in which he or she gets a chance to resell the insult. I’m sorry if you took blah-blah-blah as an insult, but this is what I meant to say, waffle-waffle-waffle, walkback-walkback-walkback, and then re-attack the victim and all his or her proxies for having misunderstood the intended intent.
— Kilgore Forelle
