Apology

HOLLYWOOD -- Despite a recent apology from Grey's Anatomy star Isaiah Washington for making homophobic slurs, pressure continues to build upon ABC and the top-rated show's creator, Shonda Rhimes, to oust Washington from the ensemble cast. Even in the wake of a lengthy mea culpa issued Thursday by Washington's publicist, television critics and some gay media Web sites were calling upon the network to fire the actor for using the word "faggot" in reference to co-star T.R. Knight, most recently at Monday's Golden Globe Awards.

Resolution seeks apology for slavery Maryland would become the second state to apologize for its support of slavery under a Senate resolution that is expected to easily pass that chamber. The resolution requires the state to express "profound regret" for its role in promoting the slave trade, but it does not call for reparations. Last week, the Virginia General Assembly became the first state to express "profound regret" for slavery. Maryland senators voted unanimously in favor of the symbolic gesture last year, but the matter died in a House of Delegates committee.

Forty years ago, a young Air Force wife from New England went looking for work as a legal secretary in her new hometown of San Antonio. Colleen C. Barrett went into the lobby of each office building over six stories tall and checked the directory for law firms. She was hired by Herbert D. Kelleher, a lawyer who latched onto the idea of starting a no-frills, low-cost airline flying between San Antonio, Dallas and Houston. Southwest Airlines was born in 1971. Co-founder Kelleher took over as chairman seven years later with Barrett as his assistant.

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Pete Stark apologized yesterday for saying last week that the White House was sending young Americans to Iraq "to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement." Stark's apology, on the House floor, came after Republicans failed to win a vote censuring the California Democrat for "despicable conduct." The vote was 196 to 173 to kill the measure, with 168 Republicans and five Democrats supporting censure. "I hope that with this apology I will become as insignificant as I should be," Stark said.

Soccer superstar David Beckham, about to make his Major League Soccer debut last summer, was talking about the advantages of playing on the grass field at Washington's RFK Stadium. He said he loathed FieldTurf, a brand of artificial surface that is popular in the United States and is used on the Toronto field where Beckham's Los Angeles Galaxy had played its previous game. He said FieldTurf stresses athletes' bodies. Oops. It turned out that three fields at Beckham's California youth academy are FieldTurf.

DALLAS -- A Jewish group demanded and got an apology Tuesday after the Dallas Cowboys' fan newspaper compared a rival team's owner to Hitler.The Zionist Organization of America accused the Official Dallas Cowboys Weekly of "trivializing" the Holocaust by invoking the Nazi leader in depicting Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder as a "dictator."Russ Russell, longtime publisher of the weekly, which has a circulation of about 50,000 worldwide, said he didn't read the column ahead of time and would not have approved it if he had."

This week's sports talk concerned some of those extravagant gestures fans love to discuss: A goal kicker tearing off her shirt in the thrill of the moment, a right-fielder making an equally passionate -- but obscene -- motion to heckling fans.Perhaps most surprising of all was a gesture of apology: Baltimore Orioles majority owner Peter Angelos attempting to make amends with a season ticketholder offended by Albert Belle's antics.The fan wrote he was humiliated in front of his niece when Belle held up his middle finger and grabbed various lower parts of his anatomy during a June 4 game at Camden Yards.

Former Annapolis mayoral candidate Carl O. Snowden agreed yesterday to settle a million-dollar defamation suit against political rival Sylvanus B. Jones after learning that Jones is willing to issue an "apology" for making what Snowden considered slanderous remarks.The two men abruptly agreed to end their dispute roughly four hours after testimony began in a civil case before Judge Martin Wolff and a six-member jury in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court.In the case, filed in late 1997, longtime civil rights activist Snowden claimed Jones had "falsely accused" him of defacing Jones' campaign posters with swastikas when both were running for mayor in the summer of 1997.

The buildup to the Ravens' first visit to Cleveland is starting to resemble an episode of "The Jerry Springer Show."Both sides were back in their chairs yesterday, an apology had been delivered and accepted, sort of, but it seems to be an uneasy truce at best.It's hard to believe all this is about the rematch of a 2-5 team against a 1-7 team.It started when Ravens coach Brian Billick said Monday that the league wanted Cleveland to win and that the officials wouldn't give the Ravens any calls.

NEW YORK -- Addressing "a highly unfortunate and extremely dangerous on-field incident," American League president Gene Budig yesterday suspended Orioles reliever Armando Benitez and four others for their roles in Tuesday's night's brawl with the New York Yankees.Benitez received an eight-game suspension as the fight's instigator while fellow reliever Alan Mills received a two-game suspension. New York Yankees designated hitter Darryl Strawberry and reliever Graeme Lloyd received three-game suspensions, and reliever Jeff Nelson a two-game sentence.

Getting the apology was the hardest part. As late as three weeks ago, two months after court records show the state of Maryland agreed to settle a lawsuit with money and words of contrition over the arrest of a musician accused of e-mailing a bomb threat to the airport, he was still in court fighting to get authorities to say they were sorry. A frustrated attorney representing the man complained in a court filing, argued before a judge July 1, that the state had failed to live up to its May 25 settlement agreement and that an attorney representing the state had told her "it would be a cold day in hell" before her client could have his "sought-after retraction and apology forwarded to anyone."

New trash plan frugal, efficient Under the city's proposed "One Plus One" plan, trash would still be picked up twice a week ("A perfect day for tidying up," April 19). Residents would be required, however, to separate their trash into separate containers for recyclable and nonrecyclable waste. The plan also includes reconfigured, more-efficient trash collection routes that would eliminate the dreaded holiday trash black-out days. And the city has also promised to step up enforcement efforts to stop trash scofflaws - those who litter, dump illegally or fail to use proper containers.

Will Phelps squander his public esteem? Of course Michael Phelps deserves a break. But the mere fact that we are having this discussion diminishes him, and that is a problem of his own making ("Not a big deal?" Feb. 3). His acknowledgment of his mistake and acts of contrition (and community service) were perfect after his DUI incident four years ago. They stood apart from the usual athletic "apologies" of the day (which typically took the form of "I'm sorry you were offended by what I did" instead of "I'm sorry for what I did")

LAS VEGAS - This was not the O.J. Simpson of old. His wrists shackled, eyes reddened and husky voice cracking, the fallen football star - who famously was acquitted of double murder in Los Angeles - was sentenced yesterday to up to 33 years in prison for robbing a pair of memorabilia dealers. He will be eligible for parole in nine years. Surprising even Judge Jackie Glass, Simpson delivered a tearful, five-minute apology to a packed Las Vegas courtroom. "I didn't mean to steal anything from anybody.

Genes can't explain all human behavior David P. Barash is a superb scientist but a lousy sociologist ("Monkeying with evolution," Commentary, July 24). As a historian of science, I fully accept the evolutionary explanation of human origins and the idea that our genes influence everything from eye color to temperament. But I also recognize the fallacy in Mr. Barash's argument. Science is not simply an apolitical search for truth. Seemingly objective criteria such as race and measures of cogitation are riddled with subjective cultural assumptions.

More than four years after a fistfight in the parking lot of Randallstown High School sparked gunfire that wounded four students, the man who provided the gun to the shooters looked at the most severely injured victim in a Baltimore County courtroom yesterday and said he was sorry. "I want to apologize for your life, and how you have to live your life from now on," Antonio R. Jackson told William "Tippa" Thomas III, who was paralyzed from the waist down when bullets pierced his neck, back and lung four years ago. "I'm truly sorry.

The touchstone of the Hippocratic Oath for physicians is, "Do no harm." But for years, the American Medical Association, the nation's premier professional organization of physicians, ignored that promise when it came to African-American doctors and patients. Last week's apology by the AMA for past racism in its institutions and membership was thus welcome though belated. Today it seems incredible that not so long ago, gifted black physicians such as Johns Hopkins' Levi Watkins and Benjamin S. Carson couldn't join the AMA, attend its professional meetings or publish in its journal because of the color of their skin.

The spokeswoman for the Baltimore state's attorney's office has apologized by phone and by e-mail to the widow of a robbery victim whom she had criticized in an online publication, but she maintained that her comments were "vastly misrepresented" by the freelance journalist who wrote the piece. In a May 28 article in Exhibit A, which is about legal issues, Margaret T. Burns questioned whether the injuries Zachary Sowers sustained in June last year near his Patterson Park home were the result of a "vicious beating" and said that he looked like a "sleeping baby" at the hospital.

Baghdad -- U.S. commanders moved swiftly to avert a crisis after a soldier deployed in Baghdad used a copy of the Quran for target practice. The incident had the potential to inflame Muslim opinion against the U.S. military and compromise the delicate alliance it has been forging with Sunni Arab communities against religious extremists. Local leaders accepted an apology from senior U.S. commanders, and the military said yesterday that the soldier responsible had been disciplined and pulled from Iraq.

No wows. Audition, the memoir of the most celebrated female television journalist in history, is on bookstands this morning (Knopf). But those in search of singular shocks or rocking revelations will be disappointed. Barbara Walters has written an intelligent, thoughtful, often kind and even revealing autobiography. But with few exceptions (like the affair with former Sen. Edward Brooke, discussed today on The Oprah Win- frey Show), hers is a long career played before the public eye. We already know the narrative well.