Roger Ebert did something recently that impressed me. As I’ve mentioned before, I like him as a critic but hate how he’s so partisan to the point of blindness. He loses all sense of objectivity.
Recently he wrote a column, typical of his partisanship, that attacked a Bush daughter for wearing jeans to lunch with the Queen of England. It bothered me a lot because it descended into personal attacks both on the Bush daughter and on Bush, going way further than political disagreement. It struck me as improper and immature.
Anyway, as it turns out, she didn’t actually wear jeans to lunch – it was a false report. But what impressed me was Ebert apologized about it in print. Not just about writing about a false report. But about descending into personal attacks on the Bush daughter. The fact that he recognized that he was wrong in print, I dunno, I think that’s impressive, even if he was wrong to begin with.