Avoiding personal responsibility used to be clean and simple. Caught red-handed? The devil made you do it. End of story.
But today we have a dizzying array of bogus blaming options. We can choose from rap music, movies, TV, video games, the Internet, Twinkies, genes, society, the neighbor’s kid, our upbringing, the booze talking, atheism, evolution, the definition of “is,” planets, stars, lunar phases, the ever-vague and passive “mistakes were made,” the economy, being an only child, not being an only child, and more. Just keeping track can exhaust the most adept excuse-maker. Call me extreme, but some days I wonder if it might be easier simply to say, “I made a mistake.”
I saved the excuse that accuses my profession for last: “The advertising made me do it.” If you fed your kids fast food until your spouse mistook them for the minivan, blew the budget on a video game system, or bought trendy clothes you didn’t need and that went out of style as you were paying for them, take heart. You can blame us slick advertising people and our so-called hypnotic work.
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