xiphias | So, I did take Speech and Rhetoric in college, and I studied political apologies.

As many of you know, one of the classes I enjoyed most in my second attempt at a college career involved studying and creating speeches for specific purposes. One of the ones we studied was the "apology", in a formal and political sense. The "Apology" doesn't actually necessarily mean an apology in the everyday sense. It's more accurately a defense. We studied things as disparate as Socrates' Apology, and Nixon's "Checkers" speech.

An effective political apology is a speech which one makes after one is accused of wrongdoing. Whether one actually is guilty of the accusation or not does influence the content of the speech, but doesn't really have much effect on the effectiveness of the speech, and, in overall form, effective defenses against accurate charges and false charges are more similar than they are different.

A person wants to acknowledge the charge made, and demonstrate understanding of what the charge is, and why it is serious. Then the person wants to draw a distinction between themselves as they are now, and the charge.

If a charge is entirely spurious, then the person can use that fact as part of their Apology -- the fact that the charge has no basis in fact is important and relevant to the defense. But it's not sufficient. You also have to explain how the person that you are is DIFFERENT from the sort of person who would do that sort of thing. If a charge is factual, and you're sorry about it, you need to demonstrate that you have changed -- that either the action was an aberration and does not reflect who you actually ever have been, or that you have changed since the action, and will not do so again.

If the charge is factual, and you feel that the action was justified, you need to create a disconnect between the action as perceived by the accusers, and the action as perceived by you.

Anyway, yeah.

So, it turns out that Representative Anthony Weiner DID, more or less, do about what he was accused of. So he needs to create an apology. A proper speech is one that is appropriate to the speaker's personality.

So, I have written a political apology for Representative Weiner that he may feel free to use. I am going through the avenue of admitting wrongdoing, and admitting that it was stupid, and, in that manner, through a certain self-deprecation, drawing a distinction between himself-as-he-is, and himself-as-he-was.

Here's what I came up with:

Higgledy-Piggledy
Congressman Anthony
Tweeted a journalist
A tacky Twit-pic
But 'twas the cover-up's
Hyperpathetic-ness
That made a Wiener turn
Into a dick.

Yeah, I know. But I can't figure out how to get rid of the "a" at the beginning of line 4.