The producers of Game of Thrones, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, said, "What happened was this: we use a lot of prosthetic body parts on the show: heads, arms, etc. We can't afford to have these all made from scratch, especially in scenes where we need a lot of them, so we rent them in bulk."

Season one of Game of Thrones had an estimated budget of $50-$60 million. The murdered-Bush scene was uncovered at a particularly impolitic time--shortly before the broadcast, tonight, of 41, a documentary with extensive access to George H. W. Bush.

Rush Limbaugh (Getty Images)

Conservative radio talker Rush Limbaugh has issued an apology for the incendiary comments he made on his radio show earlier this week regarding Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke. Mr. Limbaugh drew fire for remarks implying Ms. Fluke was a "slut" and for stating that if Ms. Fluke felt taxypayers should fund contraception via President Barack Obama's healthcare measures, "and thus pay for you to have sex," she should "post the videos online so we can all watch."

Mr. Limbaugh's words drew immediate fire from the left. His commentary also led some advertisers to withdraw their spots from his nationally-syndicated radio show.

Today, in a post on his website, Mr. Limbaugh apologized--for "insulting word choices." His full statement:

For over 20 years, I have illustrated the absurd with absurdity, three hours a day, five days a week. In this instance, I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation. I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke.

I think it is absolutely absurd that during these very serious political times, we are discussing personal sexual recreational activities before members of Congress. I personally do not agree that American citizens should pay for these social activities. What happened to personal responsibility and accountability? Where do we draw the line? If this is accepted as the norm, what will follow? Will we be debating if taxpayers should pay for new sneakers for all students that are interested in running to keep fit?In my monologue, I posited that it is not our business whatsoever to know what is going on in anyone's bedroom nor do I think it is a topic that should reach a Presidential level.

My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir. I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices.

Saturday we apologized for two references. We have since learned of a similar reference Friday on ESPN Radio New York. The incidents were separate and different. We have engaged in a thorough review of all three and have taken the following action:

• The ESPN employee responsible for our Mobile headline has been dismissed.

• The ESPNEWS anchor has been suspended for 30 days.

• The radio commentator is not an ESPN employee.

We again apologize, especially to Mr. Lin.

The anchor suspended for his own use of the phrase was Max Bretos, whose use of "chink in the armor" was captured for posterity on video.

ESPN's statement also lauded Mr. Lin's accomplishments and acknowledged that they are "a source of great pride" to Asian-Americans.

If comments on the Observer's website as well as Twitter chatter are any indication, it may still take some time for ESPN to truly appease fans of the Knicks and fans of Mr. Lin.

[AP/CBS News]

Jeremy Lin

Following breakout superstar Jeremy Lin's less-than-stellar night on the court during the Knicks' Friday night loss to the Hornets someone at ESPN made a racially-charged gaffe in a headline: "Chink In The Armor." The title was published on ESPN's mobile site and online for less than 40 minutes, but that was 40 minutes too long; reaction was so intense ESPN issued an apology this morning:

Last night, ESPN.com’s mobile web site posted an offensive headline referencing Jeremy Lin at 2:30 am ET. The headline was removed at 3:05 am ET. We are conducting a complete review of our cross-platform editorial procedures and are determining appropriate disciplinary action to ensure this does not happen again. We regret and apologize for this mistake.

Unfortunately, ESPN may have more apologies to make--Guyism tracked down video of ESPN anchor Max Bretos using the phrase Wednesday night.

UPDATE: ESPN has amended its apology to include the use of the offending phrase in the video above, adding, "Wednesday night on ESPNEWS, an anchor used an inappropriate word in asking a question about Jeremy Lin. ESPN apologizes for the incident, and is taking steps to avoid this in the future."

[BI]

Olbermann, who returns to primetime tonight, did apologize "for having precipitated such anxiety and unnecessary drama," but his only regrets seem to stem from the way his superiors handled the situation.

"You should know that I mistakenly violated an inconsistently applied rule – which I previously knew nothing about – that pertains to the process by which such political contributions are approved by NBC," Olbermann wrote.

Network ethics policies prohibit staffers at MSNBC and NBC News from making political donations without obtaining prior approval. Olbermann may have been unaware of the policy and MSNBC's application of its ethics rules was reportedly iconsistent, but neither of those excuses address his failure to disclose the contributions on air.

At least one of the candidates who received money from Olbermann, Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva, also appeared on "Countdown." Olbermann never disclosed this to his viewers. In his statement, Olbermann said he would have come clean about the contributions, but was prevented from doing so by MSNBC.

"I did not attempt to keep any of these political contributions secret; I knew they would be known to you and the rest of the public. I did not make them through a relative, friend, corporation, PAC, or any other intermediary … When a website contacted NBC about one of the donations, I immediately volunteered that there were in fact three of them; and contrary to much of the subsequent reporting, I immediately volunteered to explain all this, on-air and off, in the fashion MSNBC desired," Olbermann wrote.

Olbermann may not have hid his donations, but he didn't tell MSNBC or his viewers about the gifts until they were revealed by Politico. Full disclosure is one of the basic concepts of ethical journalism and a disclosure statement after the fact is worth very little. Proper disclosures allow consumers to more fairly evaluate the content in a media outlet. Admitting to something after it is discovered isn't a disclosure; it's getting caught with your pants down.

Supporters have argued that Olbermann and his fellow cable news hosts practice opinion journalism and should be entitled to their opinions. No one has asked Olbermann not to have a point of view, or even, not to give money to politicians. MSNBC policy doesn't ban campaign contributions outright, it simply asks staffers to reveal them to the network in advance.

Olbermann claims he "immediately volunteered" to "explain all this … in the fashion MSNBC desired," but Politico's Mike Allen says anonymous sources at the network have told him that the network suspended Olbermann because of his refusal to apologize. If it was indeed a public apology MSNBC was looking for, Olbermann's statement clearly didn't satisfy them.

Mr. Sanchez continued to attribute his remarks on the radio on fatigue. "I was tired. I'd been working 14-hours days for like two and a half months. I was doing three shows. I was exhausted. It was right after the air. My daughter had a softball game that I desperately wanted to go to, and I was a little impatient," he continued.

"I went in there with a chip on my shoulder and I was a little bit angry," Mr. Sanchez added later. "If you look at the landscape right now in our media, in primetime, there's not a single Hispanic, there's not a single African-American."

Mr. Sanchez also showed the cover of his book, Conventional Idiocy.

Earlier: Rick Sanchez to MSNBC or Fox News? Not So Fast!

Mr. Sanchez issued a public apology earlier today. "Despite what my tired and mangled words may have implied, they were never intended to suggest any sort of narrow-mindedness and should never have been made," he wrote.

Mr. Sanchez also said that he was leaving on excellent terms with CNN. "I have tremendous respect for everyone there, and I know that they feel the same about me," he wrote. "There are no hard feelings – just excitement about a new future of opportunities." It's an interesting way to frame getting fired from the network.

Mr. Sanchez's wife Suzanne echoed the explanation that Mr. Sanchez was tired on her Facebook page earlier this week.

rick feels horrible that in an effort to make a broader point about the media, his exhaustion from working 14 hr days for 2 mo. straight, caused him to mangle his thought process inartfully.

Mrs. Sanchez also posted on her wall on September 20th that she and Mr. Sanchez recently closed on a lakefront home. "[L]ooking forward to having easy access to our boat and taking it out on weekends," she wrote. And maybe during the week now too!

Earlier: Video: Jon Stewart's Rick Sanchez Post-Mortem

Wall Street tends not to blame Wall Street. "The basic fundamental problem occurred at the kitchen table, where the borrower got a mortgage that they couldn't afford to repay. So if you’re fixing the system," the banking lobbyist Scott Talbott added, "you’ve got to focus on the kitchen table."

As September 2008's crisis drifts off into the past and financial reform pulls closer, what will it sound like when Wall Street talks about its roll in the historic calamity? Beyond apologizing or not apologizing, how will executives describe what went wrong, why the system got so bad, and how it's going to change?

SLIDESHOW: What they've said so far >

Wall Street’s regret for its role in the financial crisis—what contrition looks like, how it’s expressed, why it exists in the first place, and then why it doesn’t—has come to the forefront this week. That’s thanks to sorely differing performances at the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission from two former Citigroup executives last Thursday, not to mention statements from former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and a rare shareholder letter from Goldman Sachs the day before.

“Let me start by saying I’m sorry. I’m sorry that the financial crisis has had such a devastating impact on our country,” Chuck Prince, Citi’s former chief executive, said Thursday. “I’m sorry for the millions of people, average Americans, who have lost their homes.”

But Bob Rubin, the former chairman of the executive committee board at the same bank (where he made more than $100 million), said he did not have much control at Citi. What’s more, he said, nearly everyone else failed to foresee the crisis, too. His relative defiance, and Mr. Prince’s emotional explanation of what went wrong and how it can change, are two prototypes for how Wall Street looks at its past.

SLIDESHOW: 'The Wall Street Sorry Scale' >

Now that the Dow closed above 11,000 for the first time in 18 months on Monday, is there a point to forcing leading executives to explain past mistakes? “And what if, after all that vitriol,” The Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote Monday, naming skeptical economists like Nouriel Roubini, Joseph Stiglitz and Times columnist Paul Krugman, who the next day explained why an apology was in order, “it turned out that taxpayers might actually lose nothing, or even make a profit? Could it be?”

The message from Wall Street, in other words: move along.

MILD SEMI-REGRET IS more common than non-apologies and passionate atonement. On the day before the Citibank testimony, Mr. Greenspan said he’d been wrong 30 percent of the time, but would not elaborate, and he opened his remarks by blaming foreign historic events, like the Berlin Wall’s fall, on where we are today.

In November, likewise, Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein said the firm had “participated in things that were clearly wrong and we have reasons to regret and apologize for,” but did not explain what the things or the reasons were. On the morning of Mr. Greenspan’s speech, Goldman released a letter to shareholders that said the bank did not “‘bet against’ our clients.”

On Friday, the investigative newsroom ProPublica released a massive profile of Magnetar, a hedge fund that created and bet against massive bundles of subprime mortgage investments that soon became worthless. Responding to that report, the hedge fund denied that it had any intent or reason to believe that its subprime securities were built to fail.

The next day, Frank Rich’s column was headlined “No One Is to Blame for Anything.” But, to be fair, there have been dozens of apologies from financiers, just odd ones. Wall Street, after all, has become savvier since William Vanderbilt’s “the public be damned” and J.P. Morgan’s “I owe the public nothing.”

“We’ve said repeatedly that we are disappointed in our performance and that it wasn’t up to our standards,” Ed Sweeney, spokesperson for the credit-rating agency S&P, said this week. “I think, frankly, that people—I’m trying to think of the word here—ratings are only one piece of the investment-decision-making process, and the investment-research process, and that’s how we think they should be used.”

“Among our disappointments has been the ratings of mortgage-backed securities issued between 2005 and 2007,” S&P president Deven Sharma told Congress in September. “Over the course of 150 years, however, our track record is something in which our people can take pride.”

“Did the company make mistakes? I’ve never used the word ‘mistake,’” Mr. Sweeney said.

The Morgan Stanley chairman John Mack stands alone as the only big Wall Street boss who has consistently said otherwise, though he stepped down this year as CEO. In a high-finance version of the famous scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, there was silence from his seven peers when the House Financial Services Committee asked if there was a need for apology. “Anyone,” a committee member said. Mr. Mack responded by describing years of mistakes.
This November he pressed for more regulation. “We cannot control ourselves,” he said. “I’m behind closed doors with these people all the time,” Morgan Stanley spokesperson Jeanmarie McFadden said, “and people legitimately understand that things must change.”

JPMorgan’s chief, Jamie Dimon, even if he doesn’t have a reputation for unabashed pride, has not been as forthcoming. “We did make mistakes,” he said at the first crisis commission hearing in January, “and there were things we could have done better.”

“What should we apologize for?” the New York Post wrote the next day, quoting a Wall Street insider. “I’ll tell you this much, we do a lot more for America than Congress does.”

That hearing marked the one-year anniversary of John Thain’s departure from Merrill Lynch. When he left, he apologized for the infamous $1.2 million renovation of his office, “in the light of the world we live in today.” In a following interview, asked what was wrong with predecessor Stan O’Neal’s office, he said, “Well, his office was very different than the general décor of Merrill’s offices. It really would have been very difficult for me to use it in the form that it was in. And you know, I, it needed to be renovated no matter what.”

SOMETIMES THERE ARE no apologies at all. In the second-to-last paragraph of his recent memoir, former Treasury Secretary and Goldman chief Hank Paulson explains, “I don’t mean to minimize our troubles, but every major country has more-significant problems.”

The lobbyist Scott Talbott, a senior vice president for the Financial Services Roundtable, said that while Wall Street isn’t entirely innocent, it’s not the villain. “The basic fundamental problem occurred at the kitchen table, where the borrower got a mortgage that they couldn’t afford to repay. So if you’re fixing the system,” he said, “you’ve got to focus on the kitchen table.”

To the extent that Wall Street apologizes, with a few exceptions, it gives the sense that the crisis was caused by a regrettable combination of rivals’ incompetence, some bad judgment that’s since been remedied, a great deal of historic bad luck and gruesome governmental failures that make them look relatively blameless. Life goes on.

James Kwak, who wrote the book 13 Bankers with the former IMF chief economist Simon Johnson, said that’s part of an “intellectual cover-up.” What he means is that when Mr. Rubin or Mr. Greenspan describes the crisis as an unforeseeable natural disaster, despite the evidence to the contrary, it distracts from the man-made causes.

“There was a conscious intention to break down the regulatory system and to make sure that the banks were essentially allowed to do whatever they wanted to do, especially when it came to new products,” he said.

Barbara Kellerman, a lecturer at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government who has written about leaders’ contrition, says that what’s important about apologies are timeliness and sincerity, and what comes along with them. “Nobody begrudges the right people have to make a profit, and the more profit the better,” she said, “but in a way that’s reasonably fair and adhering to the law, and not corrupt, and not greedy to the point of nausea.”

“The issue is,” said the Wall Street firm’s chief of communications source, pointing to rivals who were more heavily leveraged, “if we were to say we were sorry, what would we say we’re sorry for?”

mabelson@observer.com