Saturday, May 7, 2005

One Day More To Possible Litigation/Mother's Day

One day more Another day, another destiny This never ending road to apology These men who seem to know my crime will surely come a second time One day more - One Day More/Les Miserables [apologies to Jean Valjean]
I just realised two days ago that tomorrow is Mother's Day. It's too late to buy a card, so I'll have to call my mum and apologise. AcidFlask has it worse, though. Tomorrow is the deadline to apologise some more, until there are no more apologies left in reserve. I don't envy this man. And I think exams should come first, maybe more people can come around and empathise with this point. I'm actually more interested in why the apology so far is currently 'apology no enough'.
According to A*Star's spokesman: 'We felt that, from what Mr Chen posted, he has not made an unreserved and sincere apology.' They felt, for example, that the last line of his apology left an avenue open for him to make remarks about A*Star or Mr Yeo on other websites or media. What A*Star wants now, it said, is an unreserved apology, a retraction and a promise not to do it again. --ST
Besides the semantics of the last sentence mentioned in the ST, could it also possibly be because AcidFlask prefaced it with a quote from anti-slavery spokesperson Wendell Phillips (1811-1884), abolitionist, orator and columnist for The Liberator? The quote is from a speech before the Massachusetts Antislavery Society in 1852.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. - Wendell Phillips
The full quote follows:
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty—power is ever stealing from the many to the few. The hand entrusted with power becomes...the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continual oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot: only by unintermitted Agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.
Maybe that's why they want a second apology, an unconditional apology. And no more prefacing it with relevant quotes, please! More from ChannelNewsLocalBlogsphere, SingaporeAngle.

1 comment:

Huichieh said...

Trackback: From a Singapore Angle, ST Steps into the Breech / TODAY tries again

(PS: Look for "Wendell Phillips quote")