It was the best of Olympic Games opening ceremonies, it was the worst of Olympic Games opening ceremonies, it was the opening ceremony of wisdom, it was the opening ceremony of foolishness. But mostly, it was the opening ceremony of apologies. Here we examine two, which are instructive concerning corporate mea culpas.

A major mistake occurred at the July 26 opening extravaganza of the Paris Olympics when the South Korean team was introduced as the North Koreans. This upset the South Koreans. “This absurd gaffe occurred because those in charge of operations failed to be attentive,” said Lee Kee-heung, president of that country’s Olympic committee, according to South Korean newspaper Hankyoreh. Lee said he would demand an apology.

He didn’t have to wait long. The International Olympic Committee issued a statement the next day revealing that IOC President Thomas Bach spoke by phone with Republic of Korea (aka South Korea) President Yoon Suk-yeol and “apologized sincerely for the mistake,” which the statement said was caused by “human error, for which the IOC is deeply sorry.”

So, pretty straightforward: An organization blundered and it apologized for that blunder.

Drag Artists

Compare that to the second, more controversial situation. The opening ceremony included a tableau of people, including drag artists and dancers, assembled along a bridge over the Seine. At the center of the group was French disc jockey and lesbian activist Barbara Butch.

Many people took this to be a depiction of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, and a blasphemous one at that, with DJ Butch and the drag queens and others representing Jesus Christ and his apostles. Conservative religious groups objected. For example, the French Bishops Conference of the Catholic Church said the scene was a “mockery and derision of Christianity.”

Thomas Jolly, artistic director of the ceremony, denied that interpretation and said the scene was meant to represent a pagan feast. In fact, Dionysus, the Greek god of wine (among other things), was featured heavily in it. “My wish isn’t to be subversive, nor to mock or to shock,” Jolly told the Associated Press.

‘Really Sorry’

Still, given the backlash, an official response was in order. “Clearly there was never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group,” Paris 2024 spokesperson Anne Descamps said at a press conference. “If people have taken any offense we are, of course, really, really sorry.”

That was it in terms of apology. Given the disagreement over the facts, the apology was much different from the Korea situation. This is an important concept in corporate apologies: Facts come into play and the apology may be less forthright if the accused organization feels it’s not as culpable. No doubt, the debate about the interpretation of the tableau will continue.

Photo Credit: noriox/Shutterstock

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