I've been around a while and I've found that it's rather rare a person will try to intimidate or belittle a person on the same day they have an epiphany of their own failings all without external influence. In this situation the CEO is forced to confront perspective that isn't aligned with his. He's got two options at this point: the first is to acknowledge where he made mistakes and truly apologize the second is damage control - I think he attempted the latter. When you look through his history his apology is exactly as I described. His intention is to squash both problems while leaving the door open to an end game his lawyer(s) have counselled him on, potentially after the scrutiny subsides.

Also, my intention of responding in line was appropriate in my opinion. The parent to the CEOs comment was very well defined. The CEO made reference to it being good advice. In my opinion publicly acknowledging good advice without following through on it seems hypocritical. That's my opinion.

Finally, appropriateness seems to be an odd argument given all of the public inappropriateness from the CEO directly. The CEO has had many openings to right his wrong at this point, yet has not seemed to have been able to bring himself to execute on that.