Christina AguileraChristina Aguilera was the first, but she certainly won't be the last celebrity to proffer a vaguely sincere sorry for how things went down at the Super Bowl on Sunday. After flubbing a line of our national anthem in front of millions of viewers and a very prickly live audience, X-tina released a statement saying: "I can only hope that everyone could feel my love for this country and that the true spirit of its anthem still came through."

We expect many more such missives in the next several days, namely from The Black Eyed Peas for stealing a little piece of America's soul with their halftime performance and Cameron Diaz for making everyone gag on their chicken wings when she was caught on camera hand-feeding A-Rod. We suspect there will ultimately be some words of regret issued by Groupon for their vaguely insensitive Timothy Hutton-Tibet ad from Sunday night. Timothy Hutton may also say sorry. he doesn't seem to have much else going on.

But the question is, does any of it matter? Are these real apologies or are they the kind of forced, head hanging, I don't want a spanking and I just really want everyone to keep liking me fauxpologies which have become as commonplace in celebrity land as they are in middle school. Any time we see someone famous publicly criticized for their actions we see a careful tango of public guilt admission, meant to exonerate all sins and make sure they still get to sit with the rest of the popular kids in the lunchroom.