Keller @ Large: Finger-Pointing Easier Than Taking Responsibility

BOSTON (CBS) - What a terrible story out of Atlanta Tuesday, where a 30 year old man died after he fell 65 feet from a walkway at the baseball stadium where the Atlanta Braves play.

As you can imagine, his family is distraught, and his father is talking about hiring a lawyer because the son was 6'6" tall and fell over a railing that dad claims was "not tall enough" and "dangerous."

Listen to Jon's commentary:

I was curious so I looked at video of the railing in question, and it appears to be a normal height, at least waist-high even on a 6'6" man. Was alcohol a factor here?

"He might have had one or two beers," his mother says.

Then I noticed an item out of Maryland, where Army Private Bradley Manning is on trial in a military court for leaking "hundreds of thousands" of classified documents to the website WikiLeaks.

His lawyers are offering a novel defense apparently aimed at reducing his eventual sentence: that Manning's superiors should have known he was mentally unstable and transferred or discharged him before he committed the crime.

Excuse me?

I am all for corporate responsibility, of the Braves to provide a safe environment for their fans, of the Army to deal appropriately with troubled soldiers.

But what about the responsibility of individuals to use common sense and obey the law?

I'll give those grieving parents the benefit of the doubt; maybe they just need to know the facts of what happened before they can process their tragedy.

But really, the Army should have known their troubled soldier might methodically gather up classified material and leak it, so they're to blame for him doing it?

Taking responsibility for your own actions isn't always easy.

Apparently, finger-pointing and blame-shifting is.

You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. You can also watch Jon on WBZ-TV News.