Best Apology Ever: Tabloid Says Sorry To Aliens For Linking Them To Scientology
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Last week British tabloid The Sun ran a report of UFOs hovering over the headquarters of the British Church of Scientology. Known to be a rather litigious sort, the Church’s legal department demanded an apology from the paper, which it subsequently received. There was, however, a bit of a twist to this particular act of contrition. Instead of a traditional “Hey we screwed up, our bad,” the publication instead directed their apology to the aliens. After all, you don’t want to offend the extraterrestrials. If movies have taught us anything, it’s that they more often than not have the technology to blast us into kingdom come. Better not to piss them off.
The short retraction makes it obvious the act was in response to threatened legal action, and concludes with the line, “Following a letter from lawyers for the Church, we apologise to any alien lifeforms for linking them to Scientologists.”
Brilliant. This is how you apologize when someone uses legal means to force your hand. We’ll see how long it takes the legal team to contact The Sun again, especially since it’s easier to win a libel suit in Britain than in the US, but for now, this is pretty damn funny.
The original article reported “two flat, silver discs” hanging around the Church of Scientology in East Grinstead, West Sussex, late in December 2012. After being spied by pilots at an airport, “Air traffic control staff then spotted a total of six UFOs on their radar before they suddenly vanished.” The reports were classified as “level D,” or unexplained.
