The Hardest Word?
Is it ahistorical for public figures to say sorry for events that took place before they were born? The issue cuts to the heart of the relationship between the living and the dead.
There is nothing like an apology to make people angry. I am not sure why this is the case. There is power in telling the truth about the past, as the success of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission has shown. Yet, if a politician or religious leader offers an apology for a historic wrong, it feels jarring to many. It is dismissed as a meaningless, empty gesture that somehow causes more affront than comfort. Apologies are ridiculed; they provoke outrage and self-righteousness. Yet that has not stopped leaders from offering them. F.W. de Klerk apologised for Apartheid and Jacques Chirac for the Vichy French government deporting Jews. Pope John Paul II was the master of the historic apology.
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