I apologize!

Having headed up the public relations department of a major international pharmaceutical corporation, I think back to when an Ivy League CEO walked into my office and asked me why we must have ‘dialogue’ rather than just ‘talk’.

I certainly didn’t have any stand-by statements or talking points ready to address this question, so I winged it, as often was the case in this field.

I said something to the effect that ‘talk’ is an old and perhaps tired word and ‘dialogue’ is the new vernacular meaning that we are exchanging information with each other rather than talking at each other.

He said, but we are talking with each other.

I said yes, and he got up and walked out of my office.

We talked frequently, no longer having dialogue.  One day I had a favor to ask of him.  I was requested to host an industry meeting and knew that he belonged to the University Club in New York.

I explained the situation to him and he said he would be more than glad to allow me to use his club.  However, it would require that I meet him in the city for lunch so that he could introduce me to the appropriate staff  at the club to arrange for the meeting.

We did this, and during lunch we talked about compote heaps which he apparently was an expert at, working during his spare time in his Rye New York home. He talked, I listened and there was no dialogue, for I had nothing to contribute.

Words, nouns and adjectives, can get one into trouble, more so today than yesterday.  For the powerful didn’t speak-out much then, they seemed to understand how much trouble they could get into when speaking out.

Today we must all be transparent and articulate.  Or, maybe that’s more articulate than transparent.

We don’t ‘apologize’ or admit to our ‘mistakes’ of the spoken word anymore, we ‘walk back’ from them.  Is this because it is more gentler and kinder to ourselves?

I guess I always thought that apologizing for what I said that was wrong or admitting to a mistake was a firm or positive admission to guilt and, as a result I firmly put it behind me.

But a ‘walk back’ from a misstatement seems to be somewhat nebulous, kind of like ‘talking’ vs ‘dialogue.’

The more famous you are the more prominent your mistakes. Politicians make a lot of them.

President Obama has made a few.  Remember his famous beer summit at the White House?  That was when he called the Boston police ‘stupid’ for arresting a Harvard professor in his home, but didn’t have all the facts.  He did a ‘walk back’ and held a beer summit and invited the participants and his Vice President Joe Biden to drink beer.  Biden doesn’t drink.

But Biden is the king of faux pas, he probably has more ‘walk backs’ when it comes to ‘talk’ or ‘dialogue’ than anyone who has ever served in public office.  He still hasn’t mastered the teleprompter, much to the dismay of the President.

When Biden was a presidential candidate opposing Obama he did an interview with the New York Observer and said about his opponent at the time: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy, I mean, that’s storybook, man”

Biden’s walk back: “I deeply regret any offense my remark in the New York Observer might have caused anyone.  That was not my intent and I expressed that to Senator Obama.”

The ‘walk back’ was so great Obama made him his running mate and his wordsmith pratfalls’ continue to this day.

I don’t know about you, but rather than do ‘walk backs’, I would rather do a ‘walk about’ with Crocodile Dundee.