Public apologies must be in season. In just the last week, Daniel Dae Kim said he was deeply ashamed and embarrassed, Kimo Kahoano looked into a news camera and promised to move forward and Dog Chapman said he was deeply disappointed in himself. Add to that Jon Riki Karamatsu looking hangdog and ashamed during the Superferry special session and you have a veritable run, a trend, a movement.

It's better than the old style of staying tight-lipped and pretending nothing happened. However, as with all apologies that come only after an embarrassing disclosure and the potential for career fallout, sincerity is difficult to discern from damage control. Would they be so sorry if their behavior hadn't made headlines? Some people have to be caught to be sorry.

Of all the recent Hawai'i apologists, Chapman has the most to lose. Actors, television hosts, even lawmakers get past DUIs all the time. It is easier, and more publicly believable, to swear off drinking and driving than it is to swear off being a racist. The word Chapman used, repeatedly, and the tone in which he said it, isn't easy to shrug off. The smell remains long after the clip has disappeared into the realm of forgotten Web junk. Even his biggest fan, Gene Ward, is making like he doesn't know him.

Chapman set himself up for this fall by being so sanctimonious and preachy on his show. Every episode he's telling people to straighten up and live pono, you know, like him. If he really had been reborn, that somehow made it easier to take his low-speed pursuits of petty criminals as entertainment and ignore the racist undertone of the show in which the saviors are white and the bad guys are brown.

For the past three years, Chapman has been another guy making a buck off Hawai'i, portraying it as a dirty, dangerous place, its drug-addled residents in desperate need of saving by Dog and his tattooed crew. He drops "aloha" and "brah" in every other sentence for effect, but where was the aloha in that phone call with his son? Clearly, when the cameras are off, so is the aloha.

Apologies are important, but they are not the only step in making things right. Will the show continue? Well, this is a guy whose whole life is a comeback, and even Don Imus is getting a new gig. At the very least, let's hope the blind adoration of the Dog is tempered. No more legislative proclamations. He's not a hero, he's not the arbiter of pono, he's not a shining example of the best of our community. He's a television character who is clearly a very different guy in real life.

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.