The best and worst apologies of the week

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 14:58:00 +0000

It has been one sorry excuse for a week. Each new day has brought with it a fresh batch of bad behavior and questionable decision making, and with it, apologies of highly variable quality. If you're looking for object lessons in what not to say – and how to get it right – behold our rogue's gallery of March mad men.

Let's start with our gold medalist in the field of ineffectual apologies – Rick Ross. Ross has come under fire for his part on Rocko's "Gift of Gab" mixtape, specifically the track "U.O.E.N.O." As activist journalist Rosa Clemente pointed out, "U.O.E.N.O." contains Ross' "problematic" line, "Put Molly all in her champagne, she ain't even know it/ I took her home and I enjoyed that, she ain't even know it." "Molly," by the way, is what the young folk call Ecstasy.

“Call of Duty: David Petraeus”

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 19:02:00 +0000

Everyone's been there. You're watching TV, and you get sucked into what appears to be a movie trailer for a new action thriller. Navy SEALs are taking out a terrorist in some war-torn third-world nation. Explosions! Gore! High-tech wizardry!

A couple of seconds later you realize you've been hornswoggled by yet another commercial for a new first-person-shooter combat game. You were fooled because the graphics were so goddamned realistic.

But I'll bet you didn't know just how realistic modern video games strive to be. Or what a chore it is to keep up with the ever-changing military state-of-the-art.

In the latest installment in Activision's hugely successful "Call of Duty" video game series, "Black Ops 2," released on Monday at midnight, the secretary of defense is a guy named David Petraeus. That might have been a reasonable assumption, as recently as a week ago. But now it's ancient history. Might as well have Ulysses S. Grant running the show.

Salon.com > David Patraeus

The best and worst apologies of the week

“Call of Duty: David Petraeus”