Gog.org.nz

Are you fat? Are you morbid? Or are you morbidly fat? If you’re both, congratulations! It’s not your fault. The new message to fatsos is:

It’s not you. It’s your metabolism.

That’s the slogan in a commercial for the SureSlim Wellness Clinic in a TV campaign positioned slap-bang in the middle of the oxymoronically named Masterchef Australia and alongside ads for products that blatantly encourage gluttony. Naturally, if you sign up to SureSlim’s course, the package will include stuff that reinforces the no-blame message and makes you feel heaps better – if not a whole lot lighter. But if you fail to lose weight, it’s not you. It’s SureSlim’s advertising, and it’s your metabolism’s stubborn refusal to obey SureSlim’s strictures.


This slogan is just another escalation of the creeping “no blame” culture that afflicts us. No fault can ever apply to you. Instead, fault always rests with other people (or things) over which you – as a victim – naturally have no control.

So if, like boxer David Tua, you block out the daylight and knock out anyone in your way, and then shuffle off to Burger King for an interview with a fawning TV idiot, it’s not your fault for being a dull pugilist who didn’t know when to stop punching the living daylights out of the opponent. It’s because God cruelly deprived you of intelligence and cursed you with an uncontrollable metabolism.

If you are an air traffic controller, or a Civil Aviation Authority official, and a light aircraft is in collision with a helicopter above Paraparaumu airport, killing everyone, it’s not you. It’s the lack of rules. If 100 calves die from neglect, or a river is polluted, or a gang takes over the neighbourhood and refuses to obey an eviction order because (despite the fact that they appear to be sub-human) they claim it breaches their human rights, or if someone helps someone else to die, it’s never, ever you. It’s either the law, or it’s the “protocol”, or it’s the weekend that you just happen to be having off.


If you are a minister helping yourself to expenses, it’s not you. It’s your trust, and it’s the rules. If you are a former minister found guilty of (and jailed for) bribery, corruption and perverting the course of justice, it’s not you. It’s koha, it’s your cultural entitlement, it’s the system. It’s not you.

If you get drunk and kill someone on the roads, it’s not you. It’s either the alcohol, or your metabolism, or the vehicle, and it’s the victim’s fault for getting in your way.


If the gun went off and somebody died, it’s not you. It’s the gun. There must have been something wrong with it, or the people who made it or sold it, or the police who gave you a firearms licence (or didn’t check you out).

You didn’t really kill that child. It was your fists, acting independently during some brief seconds when, without your consent, they were disconnected from your brain. It’s because you were deprived. Or underpaid. Or ill-educated. Or something else. It wasn’t you.

Lost someone in an adventure tourism trip? It wasn’t you. It was an accident, and in these enlightened times, we don’t accept the concept of an accident. We want closure, and someone must be blamed. It’s not you.

Dying of lung cancer? It’s not you. It’s that irresponsible, random carcinoma. Don’t worry. We’ll catch it some day…

Unable to read and write? It’s not you. It’s just too hard. Unable to teach? It’s not you. It’s the parents. Unable to control your kids? It’s not you. It’s the teachers.

Lost all your money to a finance company? It’s not you. It’s the Government or the financial adviser. Actually, almost everything that goes wrong is not you. It’s the Government.

And of course, it’s the Government that so desperately tries to avoid any trouble, by promoting the no-blame culture and trying to con everybody into paying for everybody’s else’s mistakes.


Question: If you swallow all this “it’s not you” rot, what are you?


Answer: A robot.

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