America: land of second chances.
Quarterback Michael Vick has just gotten his second chance, signed Thursday by the Philadelphia Eagles after 18 months in prison on a dogfighting rap.
Now he's going on CBS's 60 Minutes tomorrow (7 p.m., CBS3) to talk with interviewer James Brown - and to deliver a somber, earnest apology. It's a great American tradition: Redemption by Mass Media.
One excerpt has Vick saying this about his illegal dogfighting: "It was wrong, J.B. And, you know, I feel tremendous hurt behind what happened. I should have took the initiative to stop it all. You know, and I didn't. I didn't step up." Acknowledge, own it . . . move on?
Vick's appearance joins other great celebrity apologies via mass-market media. It's as if those media, TV especially, are magic - that only they can confer that second chance, that "second act" F. Scott Fitzgerald despaired of.
Since it went fully public in the early 1950s, the TV screen has framed famous face after famous face, earnestly seeking redemption. It wasn't an apology, but Richard Nixon's "Checkers Speech" of 1952 was a masterstroke that fended off a brewing corruption scandal. And after being malquoted in 1966 as saying the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ, John Lennon apologized on TV and in print for the rest of his life.
Think of the troops of disgraced televangelists (Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard, just to start the list) tearfully pleading on live TV to their congregations. Think of all the threatened or disgraced politicians - especially lately, with the stampede of senators (Republicans David Vitter of Lousiana and John Ensign of Nevada) and governors (Democrat Eliot Spitzer of New York and Republican Mark Sanford of South Carolina). Some, like Spitzer, have paid with their careers; some, like Sanford, hope for redemption (he has not yet resigned or been asked to resign).
TV talkers have welcomed a veritable conga line of wayward celebs seeking mass redemption. Actress Kirstie Alley asked Oprah's forgiveness (and that of the cosmos) for having gained so much weight. Olympic star Marion Jones told Oprah she was sorry for using steroids. After his 2006 DUI arrest and anti-Semitic remarks, Mel Gibson made a veritable TV redemption tour, apologizing with everyone from Diane Sawyer on ABC to Jay Leno on NBC.
In 1995, actor Hugh Grant went on Leno, too, bravely enough, to apologize to the universe for having been arrested with a prostitute. Leno hit the just-seated Grant with this brickbat: "What the hell were you thinking?" Grant's may have been the first apology tour; he soon went on Larry King.
Larry King has repeatedly turned a confessor's ear to Mike Tyson after charges of physical assault on Tyson's then-wife Robin Givens, or after rape charges, or after biting off a piece of Evander Holyfield's ear in the ring. Duane "Dog the Bounty Hunter" Chapman, tail between his legs, went on with Konfessor King to apologize for racist remarks.
It's not just TV. Rush Limbaugh and Don Imus have used their own radio shows to say "sorry." And lately the Web has become the place of first resort for Mass Media Redemption. In 2007, mulling a 2008 run for the presidency, Newt Gingrich confessed infidelities and asked for divine forgiveness in an interview posted on Focus on the Family, the Web site of Christian leader James Dobson. When R&B artist Chris Brown was charged with assaulting Barbadian singer Rihanna, he first released a video apology on his Web site, and the video went viral. Only then did he make the rounds of the talk shows, including Larry King.
Entire films have been dedicated to a public apology. Witness The Fog of War, the agonized and agonizing 2004 self-flagellation of former defense secretary Robert McNamara. The film won the 2003 Academy Award for Best Documentary.
No mystery why the mass-media apology is now an indelible, permanent part of our culture. It sometimes works. TV, radio, film, and the Web allow you to send a message to millions of people yet craft that message to make it seem personal.
So take heart, Michael Vick. There are plenty of second acts. Hugh Grant had some of his biggest film hits after the Leno appearance. Nixon was vice president for eight years and, after losing some big elections, president for five before resigning in disgrace. And in 1977, he returned to TV in search of redemption with David Frost.
But the all-time second act? Who else? Bill Clinton, in the heat of a contentious presidential run, went on 60 Minutes in 1992 with Hillary Rodham Clinton, and he semi-somewhat-not-really apologized for marital infidelity. Who could have known that night that he would (a) have two terms as president; (b) do the Redemption tour again during the Lewinsky/impeachment fracas and survive that; and (c) go on to become a world-class philanthropist with fellow ex-president George H.W. Bush . . . and a freelance diplomat to North Korea? Or that Hillary Clinton would become secretary of state? Third, fourth, fifth acts.
With apologies to Fitzgerald, many are those who have sinned and been redeemed via big media. One reason Vick will be on TV tomorrow is that, time and again, the simultaneous apology to millions has prompted a thing more magical than magic itself: forgiveness.