'My Bad' -- from Mike Royko to Dan Rather

By: Greg Mitchell Public apologies aren?t what they used to be. As my old friend Paul Slansky, along with Arleen Sorkin, point out in their new book, ?My Bad,? there was a time when redemption had to be earned. Now forgiveness is expected, often ?more expedient than heartfelt? and ?without the discomfort of disgrace,? they observe. ?It?s like going bankrupt and getting to keep your credit cards.?

Then there are those who refuse to admit any mistakes -- most famously, George W. Bush. Then there's Judy Miller, blaming her sources for her botched WMD reporting. My favorite quote of the week (so far) comes from Condoleezza Rice. Asked by Tim Russert today about administration blunders in Iraq, she plaintively pointed out ?there are also some misjudgments that were not made.? Well, one should hope so!

?My Bad,? published this week by Bloomsbury, reprints hundreds of fairly recent public apologies, including several dozen in the media world. All of our old friends are there: Jayson Blair, Janet Cooke, Jack Kelley, Dan Rather, Mitch Albom, and Jimmy Breslin, among others. They even chart apologies that appeared after their book went to press at a Web site. There you will find Hillary Clinton?s ?my bad? last week after dissing young people, as well as recent mea culpas by Bob Woodward, Britney Spears and ?Duke? Cunnigham.

I first met Slansky back in the early 1970s, when I edited his satiric pieces at the legendary Crawdaddy. He was working in a liquor store at the time, but survived that, and his association with Crawdaddy, by going on to write several books as well as those daffy back-page current events quizzes in the New Yorker.

Still, my favorite Slansky piece is a parody he wrote for Crawdaddy when he imagined a new amusement park called ?NixonWorld.? He also scripted Nixon?s last press conference, four months before it actually took place in 1974, including an exchange with Helen Thomas. ?I am a Quaker, not a quitter,? Nixon said. ?I can take it. I have what it takes to take it. There are those who say I?ve taken far too much.? He also denied any conversation with John Dean admitting that he "had cancer.?

So it was no surprise, in ?My Bad,? to find Nixon cited as an exception for telling David Frost in 1977: ?If they want me to get down and grovel on the floor, no. Never.?

Many of the reprints in the book?s Media section are familiar, such as The New York Post admitting in 2004 that it had announced John Kerry?s selection of Dick Gephardt as his running mate (?it certainly was one for the record books,? the Post said, accurately, it turns out).

But several were new to me. The Boston Globe, back in the late 1980s, twice ran a photo of Gov. Michael Dukakis with a moustache someone scratched on the printing plate. Mike Royko in 1996 said he regretted making fun of African-Americans giving their kids odd names. Garry Trudeau, after citing a bogus Web report on George Bush?s modest IQ, apologized for destroying the impression the president was brilliant.

Then there was Washington Post publisher Donald Graham penning a 1981 letter to former President Jimmy Carter after his paper suggested that Blair House was ?bugged? during president-elect Reagan?s stay there -- even though the Post had two sources.

It's hard to forget the Dallas Times Herald in 1985 offering regrets for the Joe Bob Briggs column that provided new lyrics for the song "We Are the World," including "There are Negroes dying/And it's time to make 'em eat."

But where was I, in 1995, when Ann Landers called the Pope ?a Polack??