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Apologies are hard. They’re supposed to be – it’s eating crow, not a light snack. You’ve been there. I have too. (Almost every reporter will eventually have to grovel after leveling a claim, small or large, that doesn’t quite stick. J’accuse! Je regrette.) It’s a tough situation, but I’ve always found an earnest apology, sincerely accepted, is one of the more positive experiences in life.
Of course, there are lots of ways an apology can go wrong. Sticking too closely to the Greek origin of the word – “a speech in one’s own defense” – is a pretty good way to screw it up. So is loading up on caveats or exceptions (“Nothing you say before the word ‘but’ means anything,” I’ve been told). NPR’s LifeKit actually had a whole segment on how to do it right, which I’ve listened to more than once.
Apologies are even harder when you’re a public figure. Coming clean one-on-one is tricky enough, doing it in front of a crowd (real or, more likely, virtual) is way tougher. Nothing like having your most vulnerable moment fact-checked and scrutinized and arm-chair quarterbacked.
This week, a number of apologies – or attempted apologies – made the news. Each one, I think, shed some light on the tricky business of making amends.
Probably the highest-profile apology this week came from a local musician named Madonna Nash.
In late December 2023, Nash posted allegations against Gary Sholar, owner of the Edward Teach brewery in downtown Wilmington. She claimed Sholar was drunk and acted abusively towards her daughter – Asia Daye Norris, who was performing at the brewery, and her daughter’s friend Paige Grant. Her Facebook post went viral, rapidly approaching 1,000 shares and garnering hundreds of comments. Other people in the brewing community chimed in, and some stores even boycotted Edward Teach’s beer.
All this provided a veneer of protection for news outlets that were, like WHQR, getting heavy pressure from the public to cover the story – allowing them to cover the online (and real-world) reactions to the post rather than directly confront the allegations.
I never quite felt comfortable covering the story, and WHQR didn’t didn’t wade into the fray. As I wrote in The Dive at the time, while I’d spoken with Nash, none of the witnesses would go on the record, Sholar had declined to speak to the press, and I hadn’t been able to get in touch with Norris or Grant.
As the story progressed, several videos circulated privately and one went public (none painting Sholar in a particularly good light, but none capturing the entire incident, either). Sholar faced criminal charges and later entered an Alford plea – meaning he maintained his innocence, but conceded the state likely had sufficient evidence to win at trial – for two misdemeanors, both basically ammounting to falling short of his responsibilities for maintaing order at the establishment as its owner. Charges of assault and communicating threats were dismissed.
Sholar also sued Nash for defamation, apparently later adding Norris and Grant as defendants.
Then, for a long time, the story went quiet, until Tuesday of this week, when Nash posted an apology on social media – tagging herself at Edward Teach, whose Facebook account shared her apology, writing, “We accept her apology, and commend Madonna for acknowledging her mistakes and helping set the record straight. That takes courage.”
In her post, Nash apologized directly and said she took full responsibility for her mistake. She repeatedly clarified that “nothing inappropriate of a sexual nature happened.” She reiterated that she had not been present for the incident, and suggested that Grant had omitted her role in escalating the confrontation with Sholar.
“This was a private matter that should be been kept private,” she wrote.
Nash also called for people to “stop boycotting Edward Teach” and sang their praises as a “great place to visit, enjoy, and perform.”
She also teased a collaboration with Edward Teach as a “silver lining,” promising a “special event that we are currently in the process of planning, for which we will be raising money an amazing local charity in support of our community.”
Nash didn’t respond to my questions. But Sholar’s attorney, Thomas Varnum at Brooks Pierce, confirmed that all civil claims against Nash had been dismissed. On Friday, he followed up to let me know the claims against Norris and Grant had also been dropped.
On paper, this is a straightforward apology that’s been fully accepted, with a ceremonial hatchet burial (planned for January, details TBA).
But online, and in messages to me, many said Nash’s apology felt like part of a court-ordered settlement.
Varnum told Port City Daily that Nash hadn’t been paid for her apology, but certainly apologies have been part of settlements in the past (often they are the most visible part of otherwise private settlement agreements). At the same time, sometimes an apology really does seem to be the resolution. In April, Sholar dropped a civil suit against a former employee who had been sticking QR codes on Edward Teach beer at Harris Teeter stores – the code provided a link to a page calling Sholar “a terrible person,” as well as to Nash’s original post. The suit was dismissed after the employee apologized.
It’s clear there are people who won’t accept Nash’s retraction and apology – some because they’ve had their own negative experiences with Sholar, some because they suspect the strong hand of the courts here, and some, I imagine, because they have doubled and tripled down on their online comments since last year and don’t quite know how to extricate themselves.
I’d like to believe there’s been some resolution here – but I’ll always be a little cynical. Very few stories resolve with such a neat and tidy bow. One thing I can say is that I don’t know for sure what happened – and that I’m fairly sure many of the hundreds (if not thousands) of people who jumped into the social media fire didn’t know either.
Whatever you think, perhaps this very messy story is best seen as a parable. As New Hanover County Commissioner Dane Scalise wrote on X, “A local businessman was falsely accused of horrible things. It took a year for his name to be cleared. Please use this situation as a lesson for why you need to wait and verify before you pass judgment.”
Scalise and I have certainly disagreed on things in the past, but I think this is sound advice. Even reporters who are hearing something from a reliable source know to ‘trust, but verify.’ In this case, I heard plenty but was able to confirm very little.
A second apology this week came from Leslie Hudson, an employee in the UNCW business affairs office who was appointed by the City of Wilmington to the Cape Fear Public Utility Authority this summer.
As reported by WECT, Hudson left an angry message on the legislative phone voicemail for Republican State Representative Ted Davis. Hudson called to say she was “massively disappointed” in Davis for voting yea on Senate Bill 382 – a controversial bill, initially advertised as providing relief for parts of western North Carolina ravaged by Hurricane Helene, but amended with several measures stripping power from elected offices won by Democrats in the recent election. (Outgoing Democratic Governor Roy Cooper called the bill a “sham,” and even some GOP representatives from western NC had doubts about the bill, although they came around to override Cooper’s veto.)
Hudson called it a “sore loser bill” (and was certainly not the only one to voice that sentiment).
But Hudson went further, calling Davis “disgusting,” and his longtime legislative assistant Martha Jenkins “gross.” Hudson also called Davis “a horrible monster of a person and a terrible delegate,” who “does nothing but represent rich people and gross Republicans” concluding her message with “I hope you rot in hell and you suck.”
The phone message made the rounds last weekend, along with an email from Wilmington City Councilman and CFPUA member Luke Waddell, who condemned Hudson’s “vitriolic” language and called for both city council and CFPUA to discuss an appropriate response. Both landed in my email inbox on Sunday.
On Monday, I reached out to Hudson, who directed me to “the City Council of Wilmington's email records, where I have responded to this matter.”
It routinely takes weeks, if not months, to secure emails from the city through a public records request, but I was able to get my hands on it.
Hudson apologized to city council, writing “I take full responsibility for my actions and understand the gravity of the situation,” and saying she had emailed an apology to Davis and his aide.
Hudson pointed to the difference between her personal and professional roles.
“I want to emphasize that the message I left was made in my capacity as a private citizen and not as a representative of CFPUA. Nevertheless, I recognize that my actions reflect on the City and the Board, and for that, I am truly sorry,” she wrote.
Hudson touted her passion and commitment to her work on the CFPUA board, adding, “I assure you that I will strive to better represent the City and the Board going forward.”
I contacted Davis, who confirmed Husdon had left the voicemail, and that she had emailed an apology, to which he had responded.
In that response, Davis wrote that while he had received angry messages before, he’d never heard anything like her message. He called her attack on his aide “out of line” and said that, as a UNCW employee and CFPUA member, her comments were “extraordinary and totally unacceptable.” He also defended his record of delivering funding for education, the opioid crisis, and other issues.
I had also asked Davis if he had accepted Hudson’s apology. He didn’t respond to that, but the final line of his response to Hudson read, “I will end by simply saying that I am in receipt of your emailed apology, and I hope that it is sincere.”
I can empathize: As someone who has had to occasionally make some tough apologies to elected officials, that’s not exactly the response for which one hopes. (“Everyone makes mistakes,” or “We've all had a bad day,” or even “I’ve had worse,” would all probably be more comforting.) Davis didn’t exactly let her off the hook.
But, to be fair, I haven’t seen Hudson’s apology to Davis, so I don’t know if it was straightforward and sincere – or padded with a bit of equivocating. Additionally, while grace and forgiveness are for many people foundational virtues, they aren’t legal requirements for holding office.
Hudson may still be on thin ice with the city, as well. I reached out to the council for comment, and so far only Waddell has responded, sharing his official responses to the city and CFPUA. It’s possible the issue could blow over, but it could resurface in the New Year, likely, at Waddell’s suggestion, at city council’s January 7 meeting.
Two takeaways here. First, as someone who, like Hudson, is a minor public figure (I’m not sure where 'news director' ranks compared to 'CFPUA board member'), we’re not famous but we’re definitely held to a higher standard. If I were to call Ted Davis – or Deb Butler, or Bill Saffo – and tell ‘em to suck eggs, I imagine I’d hear about it.
Second, if you have to apologize, make it a good apology. But remember, apologies are noble and important – but they aren’t magic. They don’t unwind the clock and change the past. And, of course, people are within their rights to refuse to accept them.
There was one more apology this week, that came after Woody White, an influential conservative who sits on the boards of the UNC system and the New Hanover Community Endowment, was threatened on X.
The threat came in the form of a comment on a sponsored post from The Assembly, featuring an article with White discussing his arguments for ending DEI in the public university system.
White had noted the post, which featured a 2018 photo of him, after it went up last month, with a kind of self-effacing joke. He called it “peak elite trolling,” writing that The Assembly was “using my bald head to sell subscriptions.”
Things got far more serious last weekend, when a Facebook user going by Marc Hutton commented that White “should be the ended exactly in the same manner as Brian Thompson,” the United Healthcare CEO who was recently murdered.
White, understandably upset, initially posted that the comment had been allowed to stay up for two weeks, later correcting that to say it had been up for two days.
Kyle Villemain, The Assembly’s editor-in-chief, told the NC Tribune that the post was taken down ten minutes after the comment was flagged.
The Assembly apologized both on social media and by email to White, who took issue with the different tone in the two responses. He suggested the public response was calibrated towards those with sympathies for Luigi Mangione, the man charged with killing Thompson.
“My suspicion is that @TheAssemblyNC was more measured in their public response so as to avoid offending their subscribers who empathize with #Luigi,” White wrote on X.
On Monday, an attorney for White issued a litigation hold letter, often a precursor to a civil suit, demanding that The Assembly preserve documents, including internal communications, relating to the post. The letter alleges “misuse and misappropriation” of White’s image, and reiterated White’s claim that the post was left up too long.
At least on an academic level, this story teases out some interesting questions about the responsibilities on social media.
The ‘comment section’ is a disturbing place on a good day. Your average post from a local TV news outlet will routinely fill up with ignorant, bigoted, and just plain weird comments.
Now, I might not be the best person to cover this story if it continues to develop. I’ve written for The Assembly several times, we have a joint newsletter with them (The Dive), and they’ve partnered with Report For America to help support one of our journalists. So, there’s a good chance I’d recuse myself and hand the story off to someone else.
Still, on a personal level, this story struck me as emblematic of just how much violent rhetoric, much of seemingly casual, there is on social media these days. I know it’s always been bad, but it seems worse, far worse, now.
I’ve been threatened online, and I’ve had to police threats against others in the comment section. I know how enraging and frightening the former can be, and how frustrating and difficult the latter often is.
The idea of civil discourse online seems Pollyannish, even laughable. I do hold out a sliver of hope that we’ll get to a place with less threats — and maybe more apologies. But I won’t be holding my breath.
