From her column, "As told by Ginger"

Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me twice, I’ll probably apologize.

No joke—“sorry” is probably up there on my list of most commonly used words. (Seriously, I’ve apologized to a chair before because I ran into it.) And if I were to guess, everyone else says sorry on a regular basis. But why? Do we actually mean it?

Well, coming from someone who apologizes to chairs, I doubt it.

Think about it—we forget to put our dishes away; we say sorry. We cheat on a test; we say sorry. We get into a fight at school; we say sorry. We cheat on our spouse with 13 mistresses; we say sorry. We start a rumor about someone; we say sorry.

If we were truly sorry about something, we would never let it happen again, let alone over 13 times. Most of the time, we’re never actually sorry; we’re just sorry that we messed up and got caught. We just throw around the magic word expecting redemption from those we’ve affected. “Sorry” has become more superficial than the quality programming we see on MTV.

Most of us have used the word as a replacement for learning from our mistakes. We just say it, pray we don’t end up in the eighth circle of Hell and go on our merry way, unaffected by what we did.

Well, my dedicated readers, I don’t think sorry is going to cut it anymore. It’s become so insignificant that we say it to inanimate objects or during a press conference with no thought to it…even if the press doesn’t deserve a conference because it has no part in a superstar athlete’s personal life. It’s become such an empty, casual word that we don’t even think and consider the meaning anymore. It means nothing.

It’s time to start the “Do as I do, not as I say” mentality. Apologizing will need to involve more action and fewer words. The best way to say sorry is by making a genuine effort to keep the incident from happening again.

Or you could just follow in the footsteps of the great politicians and athletes and expect to be given forgiveness for presenting a simple, forced apology in front of a critical and nosey press. Whatever.