Real men don’t walk it back. If they’ve said or tweeted something that has made the Twitterverse go apeshit, they stand their ground and say “okay, you don’t like what I said or maybe you don’t like me, I get that…but I said what I said and that’s that.” I wish I could say I’m a real man in this respect, but I’m not. I’ve walked a ton of stuff back. It’s all very well to talk about backbone, but when the p.c. ghouls and banshees and stormtroopers are calling for your arterial blood it’s so much easier to become a mouse and go “squeek squeek squeek…I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it!”
Seriously, when I do recant or rephrase or otherwise apologize, I try and do it with restraint. I’ll restate what I meant and explain that people are taking it the wrong way, etc. Unlike Sing Street and Begin Again director John Carney, who in apologizing for slagging Keira Knightley‘s acting abilities in an Independent interview pretended as if a demon had invaded his person and turned him into someone else. Coward.
