Regular visitors will know that I think that write off the cost of advertising their crap on their taxes is absurd, and that all marketers are indeed liars, as Seth Godin coined it.

If you haven't seen this, then you should. And then, you should share.

A persistent theme in my topics lately has been the hypocrisy and rank dishonesty of corporations and their spokesman, such as when they insist on the standard of personal responsibility, but refuse to take the same responsibility for their own actions.

On my way to another installment of that, I really want to ask: Why aren’t more people — most people! — offended when they are lied to and manipulated? Most people are, when they realize it, but somehow, when corporations do it ... all the time, it’s just business as normal.

Ask anyone, and “protecting our kids” is one of our highest values — we have child endangerment laws, and even well into their teens, we ignore their “consent” for some behaviors because we don’t think they’re old enough to know better.

But we only worry about intrusions on their bodies, not their minds.

Last time I wrote, I decried the stain of Big Food’s insistence that “personal responsibility” should be the only standard of conduct, when it works its ass off to ensure it won’t be held responsible for its actions. It’s scum-suckingly low.

But here’s another part of its duplicity:

They.

Don’t.

Mean.

It.

It is the only logical conclusion.

I’ve visited this area of thought before, but it bears frequent discussion: Corporate — and corporate shill — calls for “personal responsibility” are nothing less than gross insults against reasonable people.

As an author, reporter, blogger, and professional speaker, I've staked a lot on the value of public discourse. And that's why this little turd from Hershey Corp. is so offensive.

“It came down to a matter of the FDA believing that the chocolate syrup is a snack food, and that we believe it is more accurately categorized as a milk modifier, similar to products such as Ovaltine and Nesquik that have been fortified for decades,” Beckman said.

Perhaps it’s stating the obvious, but like just about everything else is capitalist America, money is at the center of our obesity crisis.

For the food industry, the issue is profit, of course. In such a thin-margin business, the only way to increase profit is to increase sales. No wonder they spend tens of billions on marketing annually.

But as a recovering food addict, I have an entirely different perspective on food and money, and that’s the untold thousands I spent to get my substances, completely disregarding prudence.

This story from FoodNavigator-USA is an interesting study in selective perception, if also being a crock.

The question of its headline is, “Is the food industry under attack from an NGO/media complex?” To which I will quickly answer, “yes, but no.”

“Tackling childhood obesity: What role should industry take?”

That’s the headline atop foodnavigator-usa.com’s story from a panel at the Institute for Food Technologists’ annual meeting last week in Las Vegas, and I had to think, “are you kidding me?”