Apologies Accepted

In honor of Thanksgiving, a super special bonus encore episode of our fan favorite, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.  If you are celebrating or if you are not, we wish you the very best for the upcoming holiday season.  May your Quorn Roast be toasted to perfection!

Snoopy is cooking Thanksgiving dinner and everyone is invited!  Jelly Beans and toast for all - including Franklin, the only black kid in the world of Charlie Brown and Peanuts!  Franklin gets a seat at the table all by himself as the other kids crowd around the opposite side of the table.  Some people see this moment in the show as emblematic of the black experience in America: included but excluded at the same time.  Other people see this as Franklin getting a place of honor: by sitting alone he stands out amidst all the chaos of a dog and bird cooking and serving everyone dinner.  Some people see racism, some see cartoon fun, but everyone can agree that a dog and a bird shouldn’t have to do all the work while a bunch of kids sit around and complain about the food.

What is Thanksgiving, where does it come from, what’s the fact vs. fiction in the history of Thanksgiving?  And what about Snoopy – is there racism going on and is there an actual apology being made by anyone for Franklin sitting all alone at a table crowded with white friends?

Get ready to dish (sorry) about the tasteful (sorry) history of Franklin, his first appearance, his meaning and importance in the world of Peanuts (sorry and yes, we’re using it as a food pun), and the sweet (sorry) teacher from Los Angeles who helped flavor (sorry) his creation.

Right Coast Pizza put out an ad in an edgy music magazine.  The ad showed a pilgrim woman offering a pizza to an indigenous man and apologizing for "all the smallpox."  The ad was meant to be funny, but instead it created a social media backlash and both the magazine and the restaurant apologized.  A town meeting was held and ended in hugs, but did that make everything OK?

Thanksgiving is a national holiday that was meant to unite a divided American country after a terrible and bloody civil war.  It later became the starting line in the race to Christmas, but it has always been intended as the one holiday that everyone can celebrate as an American.

Except that not everyone sees Thanksgiving as something to celebrate and says "no thank you" to pizza and smallpox.

Jann Wenner founded Rolling Stone magazine in 1967 and become the voice of Rock and Roll journalism for 45 years.  The fact that the voice was white and male was a reflection of the times, and the times kind of never changed for Jann. Rolling Stone captured the revolutionary spirit of the 60's counter culture and helped make it mainstream.  The magazine started with a mission to change the world, and just like the boomer generation it catered to, there was a lot of idealism and hope that faded over time.

Jann recently wrote a book about Rock and Roll and interviewed the people he thought had defined both a generation and a genre.  the seven musicians profiled were all white men and when the New York times questioned why there weren't any women or people of color in his book, Jann explained.  It's a well known secret in the music industry that white men have better singing voices and are better song writers than anyone else, but women and people of color sort of sometimes get lucky and make some sales - but the real art of Rock and Roll music is with the white men.  Also women and people of color can't articulate at the same level, to the same depths, as white men.

You can imagine what happened next.  Actually, you don't have to imagine it because it made the news and Jann realized that if anyone was inarticulate, it was he/him/himself (take that, grammar nerds!).

All we can say is daaaammmmnnnn. Britney Spears released her memoir and told the world some things and now the world is having a re-think about Justin Timberlake.  Pop culture history has it that Justin and Britney were the golden couple and super happy until she cheated on him and he expressed his sadness in a couple of pop hits.  He dragged Britney for a couple of years but it turns out that pop culture had it all wrong (shocker) and the real truth is available for $20.93 on Amazon books by one Britney Spears, author of a best selling memoir.  An abortion on demand, a break up over text message, and the years long implication that Britney was some sort of ho and Justin was too good for her.

From National Joke in 2008 to National Treasure in 2020, Britney Spears has been a focus of the tabloid media.  She becomes the center of every story, even this one - because this episode is really about Justin Timberlake’s apology to Britney for how poorly he handled their break-up in 2004.  What does it mean to make an apology 20 years later – is it sincere or just a PR move?

Even though it’s Justin Timberlake’s apology, we’re focused on Britney and her story. Is she truly unable to care for herself, or is there something more going on behind the scenes that we don’t know?  Shout out to Britney’s Gram podcast and the loyal fans of the #FreeBritney movement: Gimme More.

And we promise with crossed hearts that we are back live next week ;)

Happy Halloween!  It's a bonus encore episode in honor of Halloween (aka gay Christmas).  We'll be back live in the studio next week because as our manager has reminded us, vacations are not supposed to last forever.

One summer in 1692 some village girls began behaving strangely.  Witches were the only explanation and so began one of the darkest periods in early American history – The Salem Witch Trials.  200 people were sent to jail and 20 were killed by public execution.  The Witch Trials lasted about a year, and seemingly stopped just as suddenly as they had started.  The big question has always been: why?  Why did a group of young girls accuse grown adult women of attacking them with witchcraft?  Why did Harvard educated adult men convict innocent women and men (and two dogs) of being in league with the devil?  Historians, social scientists, writers, and scholars have examined this event and offered clues which reflected the social issues happening in their own eras – but maybe after 329 years enough time has gone by for us to clearly see the truth behind the issues that sparked the most famous witch-craze in American history?

It's Halloweeeeeeeen!  And our encore holiday episode celebrating candy and the commercialization of the spooky season!

In these strange times we take you back to the more innocent days of childhood.  Stealing a bowlful of Halloween candy from your neighbor’s porch seems like a gentler crime from gentler days…but there is a social contract involved!  You aren’t allowed to trick anyone who has left you a treat.  That’s the rule.  So once you are found out, you’d better apologize.  We walk through the history of Halloween, how it took root in America, and what grew out of it that lead to a child in Wisconsin breaking with tradition and stealing all the candy from a neighbor's porch!

What other social contracts are being violated?  Regulations around our national food supply?  A short but rousing vegetarian approved sidebar that may just make you choose a salad for lunch.  Or maybe KFC really is the only thing standing between your eyeball and a hungry chicken?

Note: discussion of a public shooting begins the episode.

It's a Halloween Encore Episode!  We will be back live in two weeks.

A hoochie is another name for a shack.  Merriam Webster doesn't know this and will tell you that a hoochie is a "sexually promiscuous young woman" (like that's a bad thing).  But the Oxford English Dictionary thinks that a hoochie is a WWII reference for a "lean-to" or a temporary shelter.  So, let's go with shack because OED is a more authoritative source than judgey Merriam Webster.  A Haunted Hoochie is therefore a haunted house and the most famous of all Haunted Hoochies is The Haunted Hoochie located in Pataskala, Ohio.  It's a family run Haunted House attraction and for 28 years running Haunted Hoochie celebrated "Swastika Saturday" - an event meant to make fun of Nazis, not to celebrate them.  But that distinction wasn't so clear in October of 2018 after a gunman opened fire in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, killing 11 innocent people.  Haunted Hoochie took a lot of criticism for holding their Swastika-Saturday-Not-a-Celebration-Event on the same day as the shooting.

Haunted Hoochie came out with an apology, which wasn't so great and didn't help things.  So they did what all reasonable people do when their first apology doesn't stand a ghost of a chance, they apologized again, hoping this time to settle the matter once and for all.

Hoochie  derivation: We love you, OED, but somehow Hooch (for booze) has got to be involved so we at Apologies Accepted say thank you for the praise and prizes you are going to heap upon us for discovering that boozy and floozy go with hooch and hoochie.  You are welcome.

It's an encore episode!  Juliette is in Sweden and Theo isn't and is pretty mad about it. 

Spectrum News provides a local cable news channel for every city with Spectrum Cable. It's rarely hard-hitting news and leans more towards inoffensive local stories about kittens in trees.  It would be the news channel for barbie dolls if they watched news.  Local Spectrum News channel 1 in NYC became an exception to that policy when they quietly fired Eric Adame, the local fan favorite weatherman on Channel 1.  They fired him for engaging in online sex in a private sex-webcam-chat-porn-site.  This wasn't an Only Fans account, it was a subscribers only adult web-cam-chat service and Eric was chatting in the privacy of his own home during his off hours.  Spectrum Channel 1 might have had a real reason to fire Eric if he had been inappropriate while reporting, but his clothes always stayed on when he was reporting the weather.

Someone, unknown and anonymous, took photos of Eric without his consent while he was naked online.  This unknown person sent those photos to Eric's boss and to Eric's mother.  Eric is a textbook case of revenge porn and is suing the webcam company for the name of the person who sent the photos.  He intends to file legal action against the person who took the photos.

Eric apologized to his fans, his boss, his co-workers, all of New York City, and the weather itself.  None of that mattered to Spectrum.  They fired him for whatever legal reason they could find to justify the firing and now no one knows what the weather is in New York City.

But everyone knows that Eric was fired unfairly and lost his right to privacy.

It's our 150th Episode and what better way to honor the occasion than with a story about Nazis!  The Canadian Parliament honored a 98 year old World War II veteran in September 2023.  He received a standing ovation for his service during the war.  Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was in attendance and joined the applause.

Now Vladimir Putin is applauding because it turned out that the 98 year old WWII veteran fought on the wrong side of the war.  He is a former Nazi soldier. This faux pas plays right into Putin's narrative about Ukraine being a Nazi controlled state.  Trudeau apologized but is Prime Minster McDreamy's apology good enough to make amends for one of the stupidest political gaffs in Canadian history?

Lauren Boba Fett was sent to congress by Colorado's 3rd District for a second term because 546 people wanted the rest of the US to see how dumb she was.  They didn't want to hog all the stupidity for themselves and thought the national stage was the best place to showcase her world class idiocy.  Thanks, Colorado's 3rd district, the following is all your fault -

Lauren went on a date to a family friendly musical theater production of "Beetlejuice."  She sang, she danced in her chair, and she had a good time as a private citizen in a public space.  She decided to party it on up and brought out the vape pen and then engaged in some sexual over the clothes petting with her boyfriend during the show.  True, he started it by juggling her breasts but she took things up a notch, or down a notch, way down, and gave him a crotch massage.  Not sure how many children were around in the theater to see this behavior, but by now every child in America can see it thanks to the internet.

Lauren was thrown out of the theater.  Her PR team spun the incident and lied and lied and lied and lied about what happened.  Video was released which showed her doing everything her team said she didn't do.  Lauren vaped out an apology blaming cameras and her very public divorce and her boyfriend's party affiliation (he's a democrat with no taste).

Colorado has yet to apologize but we anticipate a big "we are sorry" in 2024.  Political hopefuls are already campaigning against her and who knows, Colorado's 3rd district may elect a pony this time just to prove they can.