Opposing Mirrors

I watched a news piece about Michael Richards this morning, this one about his phone call to Reverend Al Sharpton’s radio show.  He wanted to apologize, again, for his outburst at the Laugh Factory last week, and the Reverend Sharpton wouldn’t let him.  

Now, I am the last person to condone an outburst like the one Richards treated his audience to, but I do wonder what really started it.  As with other “revealing” videos, the crucial minute or two at the beginning…the inciting event…is missing.  All we see is the reaction, and blameworthy as it may be, I wonder if what set him off wasn’t equally reprehensible.

Whenever someone crosses a line and enters a realm of Public Unacceptability, most people around them point their fingers and yell, “Ah-hah!  See?  See?”  The finger-pointers forget that something came before, something that drew the offender out, and something came before that, and something before that, and so on, and so on, like the reflections in two opposing mirrors.  Every one of us has a hand in it, no matter who we are or what we have done or where we live: in a moment of surprise at another human being’s carelessness, who among us hasn’t blamed it on the most obvious difference between us and them?

We see it everywhere, if we’re paying attention: Palestinians suicide bombers kill Israelis whose military kills Palestinians.  Shi’ites burn Sunnis alive after Sunni militiamen murdered hundreds of Shi’ites.  

Retaliation is not always so brutal…it very seldom is.  Have you ever sped up to avoid letting someone into your lane on the freeway?  Answered a telemarketer’s pitch with a tirade?  

The Reverend Sharpton wouldn’t let Michael Richards apologize because according to Sharpton, Richards has the power to help others heal from the effects of racism, and until he does something worthy of that ideal, there can be no apology.  

Doesn’t that just up the ante?  What can he do to help begin the process of healing, if no apology will be accepted?  

It surprises me that a man of faith would overlook the fact that spiritual and emotional healing cannot begin without forgiveness, and that forgiveness is impossible when the aggrieved insists that the apologist is being insincere.  

For some of us, the grievance becomes more important than any remedy.  We clutch at our anger, fearful of relinquishing it without knowing how to replace it, like a drunk holding tight to his brown paper bag.  

I don’t have any answers.  My thoughts on the subject only lead to more questions, except perhaps for this one: My world will be a vastly different place when I believe that every apology I receive is sincere.