First came the cascading apologies to Shirley Sherrod, the once and maybe future employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Her candid confession of how she overcame her racial prejudice decades ago to help a white farmer, delivered at an NAACP conference in Georgia earlier this year, had been highly edited to make her sound like a racist.

Before the dirty trick was uncovered, she’d been forced to resign her job and found her good name impugned by the administration, the NAACP, assorted bloggers, and the gullible in general.

It was a casebook example of how to smear by videotape. But when the truth outed, as truth will, and her comments were seen and heard in full, those who’d rushed to judgment fell all over themselves apologizing.

The president’s shame-faced press secretary, Robert Gibbs, apologized to the lady “for the entire administration.”

The secretary of agriculture sounded thoroughly abashed: “This is a good woman. She’s been put through hell.” And he took responsibility for his department’s actions. “I could have done and should have done a better job.”

The NAACP now had second and calmer thoughts. Instead of demanding her resignation, it was calling for her to be rehired.

The president himself called Mrs. Sherrod to apologize on behalf of his administration and urge her to accept a newly created position in the Department of Agriculture.

Just about everybody involved in this debacle – except the right-wing blogger whose cut-and-paste job started the whole thing – seemed genuinely sorry about it, and said so.

Simple decency was suddenly back. Everywhere.

Who says the art of the apology is dead? I do from time to time, but here it is alive and well and being practiced all over the place. Boy, does it feel good to be proven wrong.

Repentance seems to be cropping up all over. It may even be catching on in the U.S. Senate. Look what happened after a Republican senator, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, showed the way by putting partisanship aside and voting to make Elena Kagan the next associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

His colleague from Illinois, the usually partisan Dick Durbin, was moved to reflect on some of his past actions, and not proudly. In particular, his having joined in the borking of Miguel Estrada, a promising judicial nominee of George W. Bush’s who was denied even a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“I have reflected on some of the things that I have said and how I have voted in the past,” Senator Durbin said, adding that he now believes “Miguel Estrada deserves a day in court or a day before the committee.”

Moral of the story: It’s never too late to do right.

Mr. Estrada, a young immigrant from Honduras, had already achieved national prominence at the age of 42. But he had a disability that could not be overcome in the eyes of Democratic partisans: He was entirely too promising. If he had been just another conservative nominee of no great distinction, he might have made it through the confirmation process without a hitch.

But here was a bright, young, articulate advocate who was superbly qualified to be the next great conservative jurist in American history. What’s more, he was Hispanic, and his confirmation might have made the GOP more appealing to Hispanic voters, who were already growing in number and influence. He had to be stopped.

Besides, excellence always stirs opposition. “When a true genius appears in the world,” Jonathan Swift warned us long ago, “you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are in confederacy against him.”

If only Miguel Estrada had been just a mediocre nominee, the kind of lawyer who sticks to safe platitudes, he might have been a cinch for confirmation. But in light of his shining promise, a determined Democratic minority wasn’t about to let Counselor Estrada’s name get to the floor of the Senate. The enemies of promise won a great victory, and the country was dealt a loss the extent of which we’ll never know.

Now one of those blind partisans, Dick Durbin, seems to have opened his eyes. Will miracles never cease?

What next – will the whole phalanx of Democratic senators who treated this nominee so shabbily now step forward to apologize?

In the new, better atmosphere that Shirley Sherrod’s outrageous treatment has ushered in, who knows what might happen next? I ask you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury that is the reading public, has decency no bounds?

After all these years, will Dan Rather, the once-respected CBS anchorman, step forward and finally accept responsibility for his part in that election-year attempt to paint George W. Bush as some kind of draft dodger?

Will Maureen Dowd finally apologize for doctoring a quote of that same president’s – the better to attack him in the New York Times?

What a refreshing shock that would be. But anything is possible once simple decency is given its head.

© 2010 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.