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Reader question: Please explain “bad apples excuse”, as in: Obama used a version of the “bad apples excuse” to support his decision, which is just what the Bush administration did... My comments: The bad apples excuse is an excuse authorities often use to explain away problems, saying, for example, even though many officials are found to be corrupt and fraudulent, the majority of officials are clean. Therefore, now that these few “bad apples” are punished, the system remains sound and good. The upshot is, they’re probably going to keep doing what they have been doing. Anyways, “bad apples” as a cliché comes from the proverb “One bad apple spoils the barrel”. This, in turn, comes from the observation that when one apple begins to rot in the barrel, others may soon go bad too. Therefore it is a good idea to remove the bad ones before others may follow suit. Similarly, I’ve heard people say “One bad egg stinks out the whole basket”. It says the same thing. Hence figuratively speaking, bad apples, or eggs, refer to people who are considered to be bad influences in a group. Here are more media examples: 1. The British soldiers responsible for the death of an Iraqi detainee were not just “a few bad apples”, a public inquiry heard today. Hotel receptionist Baha Mousa, 26, died in UK military custody in Basra, southern Iraq, in September 2003 after being subjected to humiliating abuse. | 
