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It's everyone else's fault, so blame them
By Leif M. Wright, Muskogee Daily Phoenix
WINNING Column-October 2002
It's not my fault.
That's going to be my new mantra.
We're living in the blameless society. Nobody's responsible for their own actions or shortcomings.
That's why valuable newshole is overwhelmed with stories about people suing fast food restaurants, smokers suing the cigarette companies, poor people suing rich people, thieves suing their victims and pretty much everyone else suing somebody.
I got pulled over on Shawnee Bypass a few weeks ago. A police officer was waiting in the median on the east side of the railroad overpass. I cruised over the overpass going 55 mph or thereabouts.
Can I just say here that Shawnee feels like a 55 mph road?
You know how some roads just "feel" a certain speed?
Anyway, I knew as soon as I saw him I was busted. I was headed toward Curt's Center anyway, so I went ahead and pulled in, and sure enough, the officer pulled in behind me and turned on his blue and reds.
When he came up to my truck to get all my pertinent information, the officer asked me if I knew why he stopped me.
"I was going about 10 miles over the speed limit," I replied.
He looked shocked.
I think my confession threw him off his cop groove. He went ahead and wrote the ticket and then informed me how to go to court, presumably if I wanted to dispute the charge.
"Nah, I'm guilty; I'll go pay the fine," I said. The cop stammered something and went back to his car, looking rather shocked.
I talked to a friend of mine who is a police officer and he laughed when he heard the story. Apparently, not many people 'fess up when they've broken the law. Instead, it seems they want to blame the cop who caught them doing it.
Because everyone wants someone to blame.
I've said this before and I don't know where I got it, but an old axiom goes like this: Everyone is the hero of his or her on story.
Nobody likes to be wrong. If someone's pointing out that I'm wrong, the natural defense is to look for someone to blame, because it certainly can't be my fault if something's being blamed on me.
I'm sure it was the cop's fault, not mine. I mean, what did he think he was doing, just sitting there with a radar gun aimed at me? The nerve of some people.
He was just picking on me. Maybe he didn't like trucks. Maybe he didn't like smart-aleck news editors. Maybe he just disliked me personally.
In any case, the fact that I got stopped cannot possibly be blamed on the fact that I was breaking the law, just as clogged arteries can't be blamed on me for eating boatloads of fat. It's gotta be McDonald's fault.
If I catch lung cancer, it must be the cigarette company's fault for selling their product to people who would leave huge clouds of smoke floating where I will walk into them and breathe in tons of carcinogens.
If I trip over a crack in the sidewalk, the city should have known I wouldn't look where I was walking. Maybe I can sue.
If you get mad at this column, you probably already had a chip on your shoulder. It's not my fault.
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