Entertainment

Say what you mean, Ernie

There it was, again, the new-age, non-apology apology, the kind that makes it seem as if you, not the one doing the apologizing, has the problem.

On Sept. 16, Ch. 5 anchor Ernie Anastos, long and widely known as among the most gentlemanly souls to sit on camera behind a desk, apparently and infamously became tongue-tied during a live newscast. Instead of telling weatherman Nick Gregory to “Keep plucking that chicken,” well, you either know or can imagine the rest.

Hey, that’s why accidents are called accidents. But what struck me as inexcusable was Anastos’s on-air “apology,” the next night:

“I misspoke during last night’s newscast. I apologize to anyone who may have been offended.”

Yeesh, another new-age, contingency apology, the kind aimed only at those he or she may have offended, as if it’s their issue. Instead of a good old-fashioned, from-the-heart, “I messed up and I’m truly story,” the new, spin doctor-approved semi-apology from celebs, politicians, athletes and public figures of all sorts is aimed only at those “I might have/may have offended.”

During her nomination hearings, this summer, new Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was asked to explain her rather generous self-assessment, in 2001, that both her Latino heritage and gender made her wiser than “a white male” who hasn’t lived her life. “I regret that I have offended some people,” she explained.

Without qualifying as an apology, that was nationally reported as “an apology.”

Seems to me that one either regrets his or her words and/or actions or he/she doesn’t regret them, no conditions, no ifs, no buts. In court, after all, one doesn’t plead guilty “to those who may feel that I have committed a crime”; one pleads guilty or not guilty.

My father dissuaded his kids from issuing such “if” apologies by the time we reached 12. He’d glare at us, his eyes throwing heat, until we amended and shortened apologies to exclude all conditions and contingencies. In their completed, ready-to-go form they sounded something like this:

“I’m sorry.”

On the other hand, years ago there was a noted nightclub comedienne named Belle Barth. She told dirty jokes, or, in the code of the day, she “worked blue.”

She’d conclude her act thusly: “If I’ve offended anyone, please tell your friends.”

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Not that we’ve grown to expect better from truTV — the former Court TV endeavors to be another garbage dump — but three weeks after crime chronicler Dominick Dunne died, promos for newer episodes of the truTV show he hosted include Dunne looking into a camera and declaring, “I’m back!”

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While on his MSNBC show Keith Olbermann often leads with his sensitive — especially about himself — keep this in mind the next time he scolds someone for their lack of civility and decency:

Last Sunday as a regular halftime show panelist on NBC’s weekly NFL telecast, Olbermann treated a national TV audience watching the Giants-Cowboys game to a cheap, tired and childish penis joke.

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In 2005, after rapper Kanye West exploited a Hurricane Katrina relief benefit show on NBC to trash President Bush as a racist, many in the media pandered to him as a legit sociopolitical commentator. Of course, had reporters bothered to read some of the gangsta-standard lyrics he was rapping, such a notion would have quickly dissolved.

So it took some until this month, after West jumped the stage at the MTV awards, to realize that he’s jan attention-starved knucklehead.

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Sports Net NY, TV home of the Mets, has also been a talent feeder to non-sports programming. Siafa Lewis, co-host of Ch. 4’s new daily “LX.TV” show, in 2006 was SNY’s first Mets’ telecast host. Chris Cotter, a Fox Business News reporter, was a roving reporter on SNY’s Mets’ telecasts.