As you know, Dr. D's day job is in the philosophy, ethics, and morality sector.  Marriage counseling, addiction recovery counseling, and the like are among the routine tasks assigned to him during the workaday week.

This doesn't give us the final word, but ethics are the topic du jour, after Steve Kelley's interesting column.  Some might be interested in seeing this episode run through the prism of a counseling session.

What is the output if you run this complicated problem through the Spirituality-21st-Century mainframe?  Hmmmm...

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=== Kurt Cobain All Apologies, dept. ===

More interesting to SSI, than Kelley's actual column, was the range of Mariner Central responses to the 'apology.'  Good stuff, kiddies.

...........

First of all, let's note that in the (fading) world of print media, the headline is everything.  Just for example, consider this New York Times headline and to where it directs the reader's attention.  That's the game.

Kelley, or his editor, ran the simple headline My Treatment of Bedard Has Been Unfair

... which trumps the rest of it.  So you've got to give Kelley his full credit for that headline.  He is well aware that many people will see the headline, but not read the self-justification beneath it.

If Kelley and Bedard were sitting on opposing leather couches, the first thing you'd ask Erik to do would be to acknowledge the headline.  There was a lot of man-up in Kelley's decision.  A LOT of it.

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=== Extenuating Circumstances Dept. ===

Kelley has his job and his credibility to think about.  When you and I blog, it's a hobby; when he writes, his mortgage payment is on the line.  So, we sincerely sympathize with his need to write copy that reads, "Don't hold this against me.  The other kids threw rocks too.  And the geeky kid well deserved most of them."

It's one thing to ask a husband or wife to apologize in the office.  It's another thing to ask a guy to stand up on a desk and apologize to a department full of police officers for being a hypocrite (as occurred in one recent case we worked with).

So if the guy actually does that, as Kelley did, you weight it heavily.  Regardless of the text of the apology.

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=== Bridge Over Troubled Waters, dept. ===

If you were Erik Bedard, would you accept such an apology? 

I dunno, if somebody 'apologized' to Kelley in a 500,000-circulation newspaper and listed a dozen accusations against Kelley, would he prefer the apology run, or not run?

If a wife were 'apologized' to in front of a church of 300 people and the husband listed 12 reasons that his wife made it easy for him to run around on her, would she prefer he just not say anything at all?

The column does not work on the level of an apology.  Neither you, nor I, nor Kelley, would accept such an 'apology' and neither should Erik Bedard.  He might forbear Kelley.  He shouldn't forgive Kelley, because Kelley didn't apologize. 

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part 2