Nobody will accept blame anymore

St. Petersburg Times

BEVERLY BECKHAM

Excuses, excuses. No one ever says "I was wrong" anymore. "It was my fault." No, it's always the other guy, always someone's else's mistake. You know what I mean?

Dinner arrives. It isn't what you ordered. So you call the waitress over and explain.

"Hey, it isn't my fault," she mutters, picking up the plate. "You said haddock, you got haddock. The cook baked it instead of frying it. That's his mistake.”

You walk into your bank, a bank in which you have had an account for 26 years, and hand the teller your child's bank book and a withdrawal slip. Ten minutes later you're told the money isn't in the bank anymore. "The government took it," the teller says.

"What do you mean, the government took it?"

"You'll have to ask the manager," she says, dismissing you.

So you do and he explains how an account not used for five years is automatically seized by the state. "You should have been notified by mail, however."

But you weren't notified and you're angry because you weren't, angrier still because, though the money is retrievable, it isn't here now, and it shouldn't have been touched in the first place, not when you're in the bank all the time, not when all of your banking is done here.

"Hey, it's not our fault, lady. The computer handles those things."

Then there's the couch you ordered, blue and white, that'll be eight weeks, ma'am, and the call comes saying it'll be delivered Tuesday. But it doesn't come Tuesday; it arrives late Wednesday afternoon. "Hey, it wasn't our fault, lady. The dispatcher must have given you the wrong date."

And the wrong couch, because the one they deliver is beige, not blue. "That couldn't be our mistake," a woman in customer service says. "You must have ordered beige."

And on it goes. The roads were slick, the mail is slow, the traffic was stalled, the computer broke down. So don't blame me

Tt isn't my fault is the defense of the decade. And why shouldn't it be? It's a philosophy that even government and giant corporations live by, have lived by since the "conflict" in Vietnam that, we all know, was no one's fault. Think about it. Watergate wasn't Nixon's fault, cars that exploded when hit in the rear weren't the automaker's fault. Baby formula that failed to nourish babies wasn't the manufacturer's fault; Three Mile Island wasn't the NRC's fault; the explosion of the Challenger wasn't NASA's fault, the fumes that killed 1,700 in Bhopal, India weren't Union Carbide's fault, and, of course, the arms deal to Iran isn't Reagan's fault.

No, we are all faultless people in a fault-filled world tripping over ourselves shouting, Don't blame me.

Which is why I was stunned when I came across People magazine's frank and honest admission that it made a mistake. That an insensitive thing printed was its fault.

Apparently what happened is this: In December, People ran a story about Cary Grant in which the writer referred to Davenport, Iowa, the city in which Grant died, as an "unglamorous burg."

As you might imagine, Davenport's residents didn't appreciate having their town called "unglamorous," and wrote to say so. Now comes the good part. Instead of placating the masses with the usual "we're sorry, it must have been a computer error" line of drivel, People came right out and said, "Our apologies for offending the citizens of Davenport. It was a stupid editorial oversight." (My italics.) Isn't this refreshing? "A stupid editorial oversight." I love it.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if this were the start of a new trend? The "buck stops here" sort of thing. Imagine: Question: "How'd you do on your test today?"

Old answer: "Lousy, but it wasn't my fault. I studied, but the teacher asked us things he never even taught us."

New answer: "Lousy, but it was my own fault. I should have studied."

Question: "I understand you got a ticket for speeding, huh?"

Old answer: "Well, yeah, but it wasn't my fault. I wasn't speeding. I was going along with the rest of the traffic."

New answer: "Yup. I got caught. I shouldn't have been going so fast."

Question: So, Mr. Reagan, what do you have to say about selling arms to Iran?

Old Answer: "Well, you see, there weren't that many arms, you know, and it was more a trade than a sale and actually I didn't know too much about it, wasn't advised, and ..."

New answer: "Iran? What a mistake. What an error in judgment. And you know what? It was my fault."