As some of you may have heard, the otherworldly smart Benedict Cumberbatch recently proved to us that he's human after all, as he messed up on live television by using an outdated terminology and describing his fellow actors with the adjective "colored".
How this statement offends a certain group of people or not isn't the point here. This is a classic case of abusing political correctness™ in my book, but that's a story for another day. What really matters here, for me at least, is how Sherlock Cumberbatch owned up to his mistake.
So this is, word for word, what Benedict Cumberbatch had to say after his blunder.
I offer my sincere apologies. I make no excuse for my being an idiot and I know the damage is done... I feel the complete fool I am...
I'm gonna go ahead and admit that I'm a big Cumberbatch fanboy. In fact, he's on my ultra-exclusive list of guys on this planet whom I'd say there's a non-zero percent chance of me turning gay just for them. But the fact that I might be a little biased doesn't take away how awesome this apology is. Straight to the point. No excuses. No conditions. No asking for sympathy.
Kids, this is how you should say sorry.
Even if those offended by Cumberbatch aren't satisfied with his apology, I think he's done his part.
But seriously though, how much cooler can this guy get? There's still something to be learned from him even when he screws up.
Apart from learning to control what comes out of your mouth, a lesson here in this incident is what constitutes an appropriate apology. I've heard so many people in the past who said sorry to me, and right after that handing me a barrage of reasons and excuses, as if they're trying to make me feel sorry for them instead.
It's fine if you have valid reasons for messing up, but the point remains: you mess up. That alone deserves a proper apology, one that should not be along the lines of "I'm sorry, but...".
There's no "but". Just say you're sorry, and mean it. If you get an earful for that, so be it, because chances are you deserve one. Also, when you apologize to someone up front and later on explaining to them what leads to your mistake, it works much better than trying to convince them, in the heat of the moment, to forgive you.
By the way, my dear readers, I'm sorry for my recent two-week absence. But I do have an excu... never mind.
It's been a full week since my last entry. When I decided to resume blogging, I set a goal for myself to have at least two posts per any given week. And here I am, two weeks in, already falling short of my goal.
I do have a valid excuse, though. A day after my previous entry, something terrible happened. Paris, whose beauty more than justifies its Enlightenment name as the City of Light, was shrouded in darkness as the French capital became the target of yet another cowardly act of terrorism.
As someone who makes a living covering world news, I had no choice but to devote full attention to this event and its aftermath, which is still present on every single news outlet's front page as of today.
I was still able to hang out with friends and maintain some semblance of a social life, but mentally, I was worn out.
On the bright side, the event did give me something to touch on in this entry.
A day after our live coverage of the Paris massacre, my editor-in-chief sent a memo to the entire world news crew, asking us not to use any photos of Charlie Hebdo's cartoons in our articles, citing some ambiguous political correctness reasons.
To be honest, I don't blame him for doing so. As the head of a non-government publication, he has every right to exert caution, preventing the newspaper from unnecessary backlash from the politically correct™, and unwanted attention from a dysfunctional Central Committee of Propaganda and Education, who would routinely look for the most trivial reasons to impose a fine.
Heck, even CNN, The New York Times, and a few other big-name outlets decided against posting pictures of Charlie Hebdo cartoons.
So my boss and those in charge at CNN chose not to show the cartoons to the public. That's fine. But what bothers me is the amount of "experts" who try to be politically correct™ and say something along the lines of "OK you can have freedom of speech, but..."
The main point of these "experts" is that while they support freedom of speech, they also find the Charlie Hebdo cartoons unnecessarily offensive. In other words, they question Charlie's decision to publish the cartoons.
I'm sorry, what?
That's basically the definition of an oxymoron if you ask me.
Here's something the "experts" may not know or just willfully neglect: pretty much every single thing that comes out of your mouth will "offend" a certain group of people. That's just how life works.
I am an atheist. Religion has absolutely zero meaning to me. This is the truth, but by saying that, I've offended a couple billion people who's religiously-affiliated.
But let's see it from my point of view. I spent 4 years in a Christian college, living with roommates and receiving an education from professors who hold Jesus Christ to the highest regard.
By these politically correct™ "experts"' logic, during those 4 years, should I take some degree of offense at the fact that every single person around me firmly believes, whether they publicly say that or not, that I am going to spend eternity in a pit of fire suffering torment for the "sins" I have committed until the end of days?
I'm no human behavior expert but I'm pretty sure that's not really a nice thing to say. So should I go around the college, collect all the Bibles and light them on fire to prove my point that I've been offended?
Probably not. And that's just one example. There's this one girl living across my dorm room in my senior year who legitimately tried to convert me to Christianity. When she finally gave up her effort a few days later, this was what she told me:
"Huy, you should really think about it. Either you're a Christian, or you're a faggot."
I'm sure she didn't mean it, she knew I was a goofy kind of guy who wouldn't get offended by stuff like this. But I had a valid reason to be offended, because you know, she's basically saying my entire family are faggots, joking or not.
Back to the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, I'm sure every single Muslim is offended by the "blasphemous" illustration of their Prophet. But that doesn't give any of them the right to commit such a cowardly act.
Even worse, while the decision to not publish these cartoons will spare the likes of CNN some hate mails from their Muslim readers, it actually plays right into the hands of these radical terrorists. It creates something the media called "Islamophobia", or the fear of Islam, which is exactly what the Islamic State or al-Qaeda want, and exactly what the true Muslims dread.
I happened to spend 2 high school semesters sitting next to a friend who's Muslim. Although we don't see eye-to-eye on many things, I always see her as one of the nicest and most informed persons I've ever met. She probably sees me as nothing more than a goofy clown, though.
So it really saddens me to see her religion tainted in the eyes of the public just because of the action of the extremists and the media reactions that follow. And when the public mistakenly see Islam in its narrow radical version that's filled with violence, it puts her and the majority of Muslims in the world in a bad spot.
But rest assured, my friend, I will never see Islam in that light. We can agree to disagree when it comes to how we view religion, maintain our freedom of speech and freedom of religion (or lack thereof), while not succumbing to the oxymoronic world of the politically correct™.
Sit your laptop/smartphone/tablet down, or walk away from your computer. I know you've been dying to read my much-anticipated blog post, but please temporarily refrain from the urge to do so and ask the person closest to you what he/she thinks about the media of this day and age.
Chances are, it won't be a positive assessment.
As someone who's previously studied about and currently working in the media industry, I am well aware that it's getting a lot of flak for the job it's been doing of late, and deservedly so. I'm not writing an academic essay, so excuse me for not having any credible sources to back me up, but it doesn't take a media guru to tell you how toxic the media can be if not digested properly.
The key phrase here is "digested properly." More on that in a moment. For now, allow me to morph into an expert and explain to you a few things about the journalism profession that could help you understand why the media is what it is at the moment.
Huy, why is the world such a dangerous place right now?
Newsflash: It isn't.
If you feel you've been constantly bombarded with so-called "terrible" news of late, it's not because the world all of a sudden is turning into a dystopia.
Strange as it sounds, it's actually just the media doing what it's supposed to do.
Journalism is about reporting what happens, not what doesn't happen. Just ask yourself, would you:
- Bother to read an article titled: "An uneventful day in our neighborhood"?
- Keep watching a TV segment in which the reporter goes: "I'm live here in the middle of nowhere. Nothing's going on right now, everything is perfectly fine"?
- Care to click on a link that reads: "Nobody died yesterday, according to a city official"?
Probably not.
If you take a News-writing or any Journalism-related class, your professor will most likely ask you this question on the first day of class:
What makes a story newsworthy?
After going around the class fielding answers, your professor will sum everything up with a few bullet points. The lists may vary depending on your textbook/professor, but all of them will contain one similar bullet point.
Human interest.
In other words, if your story has the potential to interest readers, it's fit for print. Every news publication will try to tailor its news content to the targeted audience's interest. That's why we are seeing more specialized news outlets to fit specific types of audience, instead of the everything-under-one-hub model of the past.
With all the airplane tragedies this year, the ongoing terrors of the Islamic State, or the seemingly daily citizen-police officer gunfights, it's understandable that you may feel the world is in a pretty bad shape right now.
But it just reflects how you, yes I'm looking at you, the media consumer, wants your news served. Simple supply-and-demand rule: if the audience aren't interested, the media won't produce.
There's a reason why the media keeps feeding you those kinds of stories.
There's a reason why those kinds of stories always draw the highest amount of clicks or receive the highest ratings.
There's a reason why the majority of news stations still implement the "if it bleeds, it leads" model in their work, or the Vietnamese equivalent of "cướp - giết - hiếp - sốc - sếch" stories.
You guessed it. Because you want them.
So Huy, are you saying it's not the media's fault?
No, at least not entirely.
To clarify, I'm not trying to defend the media by any means. A combination of lousy user-generated content, the 24/7 news cycle, and the urge to "get the scoop" have come at the dear cost of journalistic quality. I could go for days talking about my discontent with the direction the media is heading into right now. But that's beside the point.
What I'm focusing on in this blog post is the fact that media consumers need to understand that it is their responsibility to filter their own news feeds. This is what I mean by "digested properly". Yes, the media could do a better job of proportioning their news, but it doesn't help when stuff like this happens:
Here we have a recent post by WPMT-FOX43, a Central Pennsylvania TV station where I used to intern. This is an attempt by the station to "soften" up the news feed with a funny clip of an officer's reaction to being on live TV. Now look at the comments I attached to the picture.
These two are not the only ones complaining why this funny clip qualifies as news. Obviously there are people who enjoy the change of pace and find this story funny, but this just goes to show the double-standard many news consumers have these days.
- Too much terrible news? Me no likey.
- How about something softer to lighten the mood? Why is this even news?
So if you're still complaining why all you see on the news are stories of mass killings, some stupid celebrity scandal, or Kim Kardashian's otherworldly butt, blame yourself first, for the media was just tailoring their content to fit YOUR need.
So you're saying the world is still a safe place to live in?
I don't know about your world, but mine's alright.
Of course now that I've jinxed myself, I may run into some unwanted trouble tomorrow. But even so, it doesn't change the fact that:
1. It's not just the media's fault
2. The world is not as dangerous as you may deduce from what you see on the media.
3. There's no such thing as an Apocalypse™, or The End of the World, unless like me, you're a fan of The Carpenters.
If you're wondering the same thing, you're not alone. Plenty have, myself included, asked me the exact same question as well. I'll address that somewhere in this entry. But first, let me briefly explain to you why blogging, something you may think is trivial, means a lot to me.
Who even blogs anymore?
I do, duh.
So why a blog in the first place? The thought of starting and maintaining a blog had been in my mind since high school. I like writing, but not the "tập làm văn" (academic essays, sort of, for those who don't speak Vietnamese) kind of writing in which you beat around the bush for 10+ pages about something that can be described adequately in one paragraph.
Okay that might be a bit exaggerated, but you get the idea. I prefer to get straight to the point in my writing, except when I decide that deliberately hiding bits of information initially would improve the quality of the piece as a whole. But that's generally not the case in essay-writing. Your professor and his mother know exactly what you're gonna write, so why not just get straight to it?
Anyway, that's probably enough ranting for this post. Back to my original point, I've always wanted to have a venue in which I can share my thoughts in letters and words. I don't speak that much, sometimes too little, as many of my friends/acquaintances can attest, as I always sought to keep personal feelings to myself. But there are certain things that I don't mind giving my take on.
What about diaries you ask? Well, um... let's just say I hate diaries. My apologies for using such a strong word but honestly I feel diary-writing is just a bit too... narcissistic. To be clear, I'm not trying to say narcissism is necessarily a bad thing, and I'm sure there are plenty of heart-warming diary entries out there somewhere, but I just don't see the point of writing to an audience consisting of me, myself and I. To me, writing is more about the reader than the writer. If you feel it's the other way around, you're wrong we can agree to disagree.
Some have even suggested vlogging (video-blogging) instead of blogging, as they feel the former would be more entertaining. In fact, a few close friends of mine have made a name for themselves talking alone in front of a camera. For me, though, vlogging simply doesn't fit my personality. Neither does it meet my need of a venue for writing.
In short, a blog pretty much fits everything I want to a T.
Choosing the language
When I started Musings of an Introvert in 2012, I was debating between a Vietnamese and an English blog. So which one did you guys think I picked?
Sorry that was lame. Anyway, I was confident in my writing skills, Vietnamese or English, but I went with the latter for a variety of reasons.
- My friends can either speak Vietnamese or English. But those who can only speak English far outnumber those who communicate exclusively in Vietnamese. Using the Venn diagram, an English blog would be accessible to a larger audience.
- Since Vietnamese is my mother tongue, it's harder for my Vietnamese writing skill to deteriorate than my English writing skill. So not only does blogging help me express my thoughts, it simultaneously gives me an opportunity to maintain, practice, and improve my writing ability in a second language as well. Two birds with one stone. I love efficiency. Who doesn't?
- English is a global language. If a stranger somehow ends up on my blog, chances are he/she will understand what I'm rambling about. The odds would be significantly lower if my rants are in Vietnamese.
Did that answer your question? Yes? Awesome. No? Please specify in the comments.
