Offset’s public “apology”

Cardi B broke up with Offset a couple of weeks ago. Afterwards he made it clear that missed her and wanted her back and has evidently turned getting her back into a crusade, stepping up his mission this weekend in the most public way. It started with this, on Friday: 

“I was partaking in activities I shouldn’t have been partaking in.” 

Like it was a buffet, or something. A sex buffet? 

“Partake”, generally, has a positive connotation. We partake in meals, in food and drink, in sports, in fun activities. It’s a shared experience. Is that how we talk about cheating now? In terms of “partaking”? Was it an orgy? 

Offset, unfortunately, wasn’t done. On Saturday, during her set at Rolling Loud, Offset showed up on stage, with flowers and cake and signs reading “take me back”: 

 

Clearly, obviously, she wasn’t feeling it. No kidding. He interrupted her AT WORK. She was there to do her job. He decided that he would pause that job to make sure she knew he was sorry. Who’s the main character here? Who’s the priority? Is she the priority? Or is what he has to say the priority AS USUAL. 

Afterwards Cardi posted a few videos on Instagram, sharing her feelings about what happened, urging people to stop bullying Offset online, looking understandably exhausted and confused. In this one, she seems near tears:

Here too she looks SO frustrated:

Later on, she urges her followers not to attack her “baby father”:

I wrote last week that it’s not the end of Cardi and Offset. She’s not sounding like it’s the end. They have a child together. They have business together. Think of how this stage disruption would have had to have been arranged – with help from her team. Her publicist was the one who led him out. So it’s a complicated entanglement and, whatever, if she changes her mind, that’s her decision, those are her personal considerations. 

My point is to shut down any talk of this being romantic, what he did, what he’s been doing. Because there are those who actually do think it’s romantic what he did. Offset rationalizes it like this:

In a way, this is bigger than Offset. It’s as big as the social messaging, across many cultures, that has conditioned people to think that this is the right kind of contrition for a man to perform when he’s f-cked up. That the spectacle is proof of his passion and sincerity without holding him to actual change, which is much harder to demonstrate and illustrate, certainly not on a concert stage in front of thousands of people. It’s a short cut. And men have been given shortcuts since forever. 

What also makes it unromantic is the pressure. In performing his contrition this way, he’s recruiting the public on his side – I’m sorry! I’m showing you I’m sorry in front of all these people! They want you to forgive me too! 

Now her decision isn’t her own. Now her decision involves all these strangers who’ve been invited to “partake” in the process of her forgiving him. It’s grossly unfair and manipulative. And there’s also a double standard at play here. Because you know what? If this were a woman hijacking the stage to say sorry, or barging into anyone else’s workplace to publicly ask for forgiveness, think of what the reaction would be. They’d call her crazy. They’d say she was pathetic and desperate. It would make her LESS attractive. She wouldn’t be able to shrug it off like he’s shrugging it off with his “masculinity” intact. 

Here’s a good tweet that sums up the situation:

The normalization of emotional manipulation is what I’m talking about. The normalization is cultural. It’s all over the culture. Look at the movies. Look at how many times public apologies happen in the movies. One of the most famous examples of it gave us one of the most famous movie lines – two of them, in fact: 

“You complete me.”

and…

“You had me at hello.”

At the time, when Jerry Maguire came out, weren’t we all swept away by Tom Cruise’s monologue, with his trademark intensity, pushing out his romantic declarations between clenched teeth, a lock of hair falling over his forehead, while the woman sat around, their eyes welling up with tears? 

Of course. 

But if you really unpack the story, Dorothy gave up her entire life on a risk to be with Jerry. He married her because he felt sorry for her. Then he ignored her, went on the road, refused to actually “partake” in their marriage. Until Rod scores a touchdown and does a dance in the end zone and Jerry’s on a plane, crashing Dorothy’s girls’ night, because he needs to tell her, on his time, when he was good and ready, that she’s the one. 

And that’s the kind of guy we decided we all needed for ourselves, forgetting the trauma that occurs in order to get there. I mean, sure, it’s just a movie. But is it just a movie? Or is it a scene that keeps replaying in movies and stories that have been sold to us as the ultimate love story to the point where we’ve started believing it as fact?