[gfodor]

> But that's exactly what they're sorry for. It's not like Dell's going to say "We're sorry we hired a jerk." That implies that they meant to hire a jerk.

Say what? That doesn't imply that at all. It implies they made an error of judgement, be it due to poor due diligence, a misperception of what is appropriate, weighing the options between "controversy" and "politically correct" and falling too far to the one side, and so on. It has nothing to do with intent, it has to do with making an error and telling your customers/audience that you learned from the error and will not make a similar one in the future.