"non-apology," 1971; "non-apology apology," 1991

[Geoffrey Nunberg]

The term isn't in the OED, MW, or the AHD, though it clearly isn't
entirely compositional in its use to mean "an ostensible apology that
does not demonstrate genuine contrition."

The earliest cite I've found (via NewspaperArchive) is from a
1/7/1971 AP story in which Texas State Senator Joe Bernal was quoted
as saying he had had a "non-apology" from J. Edgar Hoover for remarks
in which Hoover said that Mexicans and Puerto Ricans couldn't shoot
straight, but beware if they attack with a gun. ("Had the entire text
of my interview been reported," Hoover said, "I am confident there
would have been no ministerpretation of the comments," adding that he
had no intention of criticizing or demeaning, or casting aspersions
on law-abiding citizens of any ethnic group or national origin.)

The earliest cite I've found for the phrase "non-apology apology" is
from a 3/14/91 article in the Tor. Globe and Mail that says that
"Newsweek and [G. H. W.} Bush's staff negotiated a non-apology
apology" for Newsweek's raising "the wimp factor" in a 1987 article
about Bush.

There's a roughly contemporaneous and more explicit eg in a 7/11/91
Boston Globe column by Ellen Goodman about Va. Gov. Douglas Wilder's
remark following his comment that Supreme Court nominee Clarence
Thomas should be questioned about his Catholic views: "Now Wilder has
given the standard non-apology apology: 'If I have offended anybody,
I'm sorry.'"

The phrases didn't start to become really common until the late 90's
-- Nexis major papers turns up only 39 hits for "non-apology" for
1976-97 but 182 since then, a large proportion of them in reference
to Clinton's 1998 apology over the Monica Lewinsky affair.

I'd be interested in knowing if anybody (Jesse? Ben? Fred?) has
anything earlier for either of these.

Geoff

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