Rich in Excuses

Rich in Excuses

Here’s a new-favorite New Yorker cartoon: guy in shirt and tie at his desk, on the phone, with the caption: “I would have gotten that report to you sooner but I wasn’t held enough as a child.” A football player who dropped the pass that would have won the game actually said, “The field was muddy, it was raining, and the ball was slippery.” News flash: same conditions existed for the guys who caught balls.

America has gone from the land of personal responsibility to the land of pathetic excuse-making, from top down, bottom up; and worse, to accepting...