It Wasn't Me

First it was Colbert, but it wasn’t me.

Then it was Kimmel, but it wasn’t me.

A joke cut, a contract torn, a stage gone dark. The answer is always the same: a shrug, a technicality, a coincidence.

It wasn’t me. It’s never me. Say it enough times and the public learns the grammar: the powerful break things and swear they didn’t.

Networks fold. Studios go dark. Press rooms once open lock their doors with new pledges, new signatures, new threats.

It looks like business. It looks like paperwork. But each silence is a theft. One bulb at a time, the lights go out.

The United States is not defended only with tanks and jets.

It is defended with laughter, with questions shouted in crowded rooms, with watchdogs who bite when the hand of power reaches too far.

When comedians are stripped from the stage, when reporters are pushed from the door, when watchdogs are starved into silence, the attack is not on individuals. It is on the country itself. The blow lands on the republic’s spine.

McCarthy named names. Actors, comedians, writers — blacklisted. National security, he said. Control was the truth. And always the shrug: wasn’t me, it was the times.

Nixon kept his list. Enemies, he called them. Wiretaps and smears, paranoia made policy. And the denial rehearsed: I didn’t know, I wasn’t responsible, wasn’t me.

Putin sharpened the blade. Critics jailed. Reporters dead. Comedians exiled. Each loss explained. Each silence a state secret. Wasn’t me.

Denial is not weakness. It is weapon.

“It wasn’t me” blunts responsibility. “It wasn’t me” muddies truth into fog. “It wasn’t me” teaches the public that power answers only to itself.

The goal is not clean hands. The goal is dirty hands unseen. Not to erase fingerprints, but to erase the habit of asking who left them.

To defend the United States is to refuse the shrug.

Name the method. See the pattern. Protect the newsroom. Fund the watchdog. Bend networks back when they try to bow. Challenge the rules that choke transparency in the name of security.

Remember: democracy is not natural. It is practiced. Defended. Every silence surrendered weakens the practice. Every silence accepted weakens the country.

And still the voice insists: wasn’t me.

But this republic cannot survive on shrugs.

If the silences pile, the responsibility will not rest only with the man in the spotlight. It will rest with us — for letting the lights go out without a fight.