October 20, 2003

Yourish: An Unapologetic Apology?

Meryl Yourish tried to apologize for her hyper-rant that played some part in Gregg Easterbrook's firing from ESPN. (Meryl talked to Gregg on the phone, and he told her the gig was "a huge chunk of his income.") She really, really tried:

This matter is making me rethink the way I do things around here. I rarely get into blogwars (and by that I mean personality wars, not just disagreements between bloggers), and I didn't think that I was getting into a blogwar when I first wrote about Gregg's TNR blog post. I don't generally do the interpersonal thing. I reserve my ire for national and international figures, particularly terrorists and known Jew-haters. When I first wrote about the Tarantino Easterblogg, I thought of it the same way I think when writing about a news article: Here's something that doesn't sound right, let's point it out.

I don't think I'll be changing my style, even in light of what happened to Gregg Easterbrook. Well, okay, maybe I'll lighten up the rhetoric a tad next time.

But she just couldn't do it even knowing her words unjustly hurt someone:

Naaah. I can't do that. There are no hard feelings, he told me on the phone, and I have none here, either. Frankly, if he ever writes something like that again, I'll take him to task all over again for it. How much influence did I have in this affair? Not as much as some people think.

It's hard to admit you're wrong. It's especially hard to admit your wrong when you're a writer read by more than a small circle of friends. Meryl Yourish and Roger Simon were the loudest in their denunciations of Easterbrook. Simon did fess up. Unfortunately, Yourish just can't seem to do the right thing.

It's interesting to note that this post was inspired by Meryl's post titled "Easterbrook: An unapologetic apology?" After writing it she ended up leaving a link to a story on the hoopla and deleted her criticism of Easterbrook's apology. When deleting the post she realized that "sometimes, something that you write has unexpected consequences." That may be the closest we ever get to a real apology.

"The Easterbrook Affair: I Have a Bad Feeling about This"