I always thought "D&G" meant Denim and Grunge

Fans of the sitcom "The Middle" know about the older Heck son, Axl, who joined with his two buddies to form a corporation called "BossCo" to do odd jobs and chores. The management structure is that they are all the bosses, since none of them wanted to have a boss.

Well, I might just have to form a company called "SorryCo" to handle the overflow work of the people who script and deliver apologies for people who wouldn't have had to apologize in the first place, if they had just had another slice of pie rather than talking.

Here we go! The international fashion world is abuzz because of remarks made by Stefano Gabbana, from the Italian firm Dolce & Gabbana. Gabbana and his work partner (and former life partner) Domenico Dolce decided that the world would be better off for hearing that they consider children who arrive as the result of in-vitro fertilization as "synthetic" children born from "rented" wombs.

Well, isn't that a kind thing to say?

Elton and David

Elton John, who has two IVF children with husband David Furnish, took exception to this viciousness, saying," How dare you refer to my beautiful children as 'synthetic'. And shame on you for wagging your judgemental little fingers at IVF - a miracle that has allowed legions of loving people, both straight and gay, to fulfill their dream of having children," on Instagram. "Your archaic thinking is out of step with the times, just like your fashions. I shall never wear Dolce and Gabbana ever again."

For the record, neither shall I.  

But D&G came back with this 1/2-assed apology, which contained not a drop of sorry: 

"We believe firmly in democracy and we think freedom of expression is essential for that. We talked about our way of looking at the world, but it was not our intention to express a judgment on other people's choices. We believe in freedom and love."

We're not judging!  It's just that your children are synthetic!

And then we turn to the University of Maryland Women's Lacrosse Team.  The contentiousness here is that the older players on the team resent the freshman women (freshwomen?) for getting to play more this year, so they had a group slagfest on social media and made threats of violence and mayhem against the younger members of the team.  Someone found them out, and five women have been suspended from the team, but not from school.

Four of them huddled up with a public relations firm and here is their apology:  

“First and foremost, our hurtful, destructive words and tone are absolutely inexcusable on many levels. Our stance was utterly inappropriate and we are deeply sorry to the many we negatively impacted, particularly our hard-working teammates who deserve much better. Words cannot express our sense of regret and disappointment in ourselves. We know that everyone deserves to be treated with the utmost dignity and respect—we let our emotions get the best of us over time and we failed.

"While repeatedly asked to lend our perspective about the many elements which caused the UMBC women's lacrosse situation to escalate, we have been, and continue to be, focused on working privately with university leadership to move forward. Our goal is to humbly work through this difficult situation with hopes of achieving an outcome that makes the best long-term sense for all involved. Thank you for respecting our decision to handle this matter internally at this time.”

I don't know the exact protocol for apologizing to someone after threatening to kill them, but mentioning "utmost respect and dignity" and being humble about it are certainly parts of any such atonement.  SorryCo recommends saying, "I'm sorry for saying, 'Can we just kill them?' and 'What a b---h. Next time I won’t try and f----ing help her out with her ankles you just wait that b----h will have 50 more bruises on her arm than she already has and they will all be from me. I’m so pissed.' "

These young ladies need help in understanding how to regard others, as do Messrs Dolce and Gabbana.  First step: let them live as they see fit.  Second step: Have a nice bowl of shut-it stew.