Apologies must be sincere, humble to be acceptable

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I am not willing to let U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., off the hook for shouting “You lie!” during the President’s speech on the health care reform bill.

I am ready to crush my Kanye West CDs after his social mugging of Taylor Swift’s moment at the MTV Music Awards.

However, I am ready to forgive Serena Williams’ expletive-charged tirade at the U.S. Open.

Why do I want to forgive Williams and not Wilson and West? Sincerity.

Williams, Wilson and West are just three of the millions of Americans who are part of the larger rude culture that grips the nation. Got to www.youtube.com and you will see many examples of rudeness and obnoxious behavior passed off as entertainment or edifying thought. Celebrities and elected officials have figured out how to take rude to a higher level.

I have been battling rudeness as if it were a disease. I battle it about as hard as I battle the sarcoidosis that affects my heart and lungs. I’ve written about my desire to live by the Golden rule and to be decent for the sake of being decent. Also, I think it would be good for my health, too.

However, some folks can’t help themselves. And we’re all far from perfect. Frankly, I could lose it any moment. I am a hot head. I just strive to control it, especially while taking prednisone, which helps with my autoimmune disease, but makes my temper shorter than usual. Yes, I seem easy going. Trust me. My fuse is slow but attached to a powder keg and it occasionally erupts. Or perhaps my temper is like molten rock, waiting to find relief through a fissure. Relief in the form of yelling at the top of my lungs. I just fight the urge. My parents reared me well. I am no pushover, but I want to be respectful to others. The surnames McClendon and Lambert (my dad’s surname) belong to other people and I do not want to do bad by them.

I am trying to live a slower-paced, evenly keeled life, but this comes after 20+ years of running at full speed. It is hard to idle and chill. Just ask the receptionist at the Long Branch, N.J., radiologist office I yelled at for not walking the images they took of my chest from their third floor office to my doctor on the fourth. What, do I have to come in from Lakewood and do it myself? It make no freaking sense I snorted, verbally bullying her to deliver the films to my doc.

I thought about my actions and I apologized to the woman's face the next day. It was not her fault she was following a policy set by her boss. My apology was sincere. I am not sure about the apology offered by Wilson to Barack Obama. He gave it up only after members of his own party dogged him to do so. He also continued to perpetuate a lie – that the president’s health care proposal includes provisions for care for undocumented workers (illegal aliens, a term I do not like). Read the 1,000 pages and find the language for us, please. It is not there. That makes Wilson insincere and a liar.

I own the West CDs entitled College Dropout and Late Registration. I admired the rapper for speaking out against the federal government’s mishandling of the relief effort in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

But West seems to be working on a new CD entitled No Class, No Manners because that is what he exhibited on Sunday during the VMAs.

Can you imagine his reaction if someone had taken the mic from him while he was delivering a thank-you speech after getting an award? That was one of the most classless acts I have ever seen. And The MTV Music Awards is one classless act after another, so that is saying something.(Hey, Kanye, just between us: Swift video won because in it she portrays an every woman overcoming obstacles. I love Beyonce’s video, too, but it is because she and two other fine-assed women strut their stuff while dressed in nothing more than body suits and stillettos. Greatest video ever??? Greatest video with fine-asssed girls in body suits and stillettos, man, that's it).

West dissed Swift on a Sunday and apologized the next day on the new Jay Leno show. But hid behind the apron of his dead mother, blaming his transgression on working too hard and not taking time off to grieve the death of his mom.

OK, here’s a prednisone moment: Kanye, boo-!@#$ing-hoo, man. Life is lived on the fly. There is no time off. I feel the loss of your mom, but she is not an excuse for your jack-assery. Get it together. Even the president referred to you as a jackass. Dude, I don’t think it is often that a president drops that about people. Reporters would report it. It does not come up often.

A straight up " am sorry"would have served Kanye best. I think that is why I am willing to give Serena a break. Yes, history will remember her for saying she would shove a “@#@$%ing ball down the &*$%ing throat of a line judge in the U.S. Open. The day after the tirade, she appeared genuinely contrite.

Serena’s apology is in three parts; a direct apology to the person she berated, an acknowledgement that she was wrong and a stated desire to learn from it and move on.

You can’t ask more from her or anyone else. Did she offer it because she has a lot to lose if she doesn’t? Don’t all of us who do stupid, rude things have a lot to lose if we don’t apologize? At least her second go at it appeared heart felt.

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