MALLORCA, Spain – There’s a certain letdown I experience whenever a public figure I don’t already assume to be an utter jackass (there are still several, believe it or not) offers a hard-to-believe explanation for some behavior they’ve engaged in or words they’ve uttered after those actions or statements upset people.

For me, the disappointment is rarely with the words or deeds themselves. Most often, I’m dismayed to hear someone apologize for being less than perfect or failing to live up to the image that has been constructed around them.

When a comedian apologizes for a joke, for example, what offends me isn’t the joke; it’s the notion that a comedian would apologize for telling a joke. Some jokes suck, sure; others are merely offensive and not funny. But apologizing for telling a joke that clearly was written and considered in advance of being quite intentionally told is never going to seem sincere (much less be sincere), so why bother with the lame exercise in perfunctory groveling?

I feel about the same way about the excuses that typically follow celebrity social-media-and-porn mishaps, whether the celebrity in question claims to have been hacked or blames the incident on the ever-popular “rogue friend.” The latter was the excuse of choice for Jeremy Clarkson, after some stray liking of porn videos flashed across his Twitter account.

“Valuable lesson learned about not leaving your phone unattended when there are drunk people about,” Clarkson wrote after the porn-tweets drew some attention from some of his Twitter followers.

To be fair, it may be the only reason I didn’t already assume Clarkson to be an utter jackass is my lack of familiarity with the man. All I really know about him is he loves cars, has appeared on multiple shows in which his love for cars is the central theme and has had some fine audial moments of his career immortalized by mash-up artist extraordinaire Swede Mason.

It’s also true Clarkson has been recuperating from pneumonia in a Spanish hospital. On the one hand, that makes him a more sympathetic figure, but on the other hand it calls into question precisely how he ended up spending time with drunk friends.

Granted, I’ve seen plenty of drunk people in hospitals, but typically they have been patients, not visitors. Then again, I’ve never been in a Spanish hospital. Maybe over there ICU stands for “inebriated cantina users.”

Other reports make it sound as though Clarkson has left the hospital but is still stuck in Spain, not yet permitted to return home to England. This would make the visit from drunken friends easier to explain, obviously, but doesn’t necessarily make the excuse easier to believe.

Even if Clarkson’s excuse is bogus, I suppose I still prefer the “drunk acquaintance” variation of the rogue friend excuse to the Tearful Guilt-Ridden Press Conference approach (“TGRPC”). The TGRPC is an event at which a famous person begs forgiveness for doing something they clearly enjoyed doing, while claiming to really hate doing that thing and promising never to do that thing again. Then, several months later, they get caught doing it again, whatever “it” happens to be. So, even if Clarkson lying about the source of his Twitter porn-likes, at least he isn’t trying to snow us with the notion he’s signed up for a 12-step program to atone for his social media sins.

There’s another bright side to the Clarkson tweet offense/excuse cycle, as well: Considering his usual occupation, if his excuse is valid it’s far better that his drunk friends visited him while he was still recuperating and borrowed his phone, as opposed to visiting him on the set of The Grand Tour and borrowing, say, a McLaren 720S.

Either way, it sure sounds like Clarkson needed the distraction of some porn and/or drunk friends, considering he’s complained about being so bored in the hospital he found himself contemplating suicide.

Aww, don’t commit suicide, Jez! Just keep up the reckless driving shows and hanging out with drunks who play with your mobile devices without permission or warning, and I’m sure the dying part will take care of itself soon enough.

Image by Ed Perchick.