It’s become common to talk about culture whenever something strange comes to light, and it’s gotten a bit out of hand. It’s become a toss-off phrase used to paper over atrocities instead of a cogent, thoughtful review of a situation.

When the Bizarre Foods guy travels to the jungle, eats a worm on television and explains it as a “cultural thing,” it actually may be. When someone throws a shoe at our president, it’s less a cultural thing and more a rude and violent act. I’ve even heard slavery brushed off as a cultural thing. “It was a different time back then” goes the logic.

We’ve got to separate truth from the artful excuses. As our kindergarten teacher would tell us, wrong is wrong no matter who’s doing it, no matter when it’s happening. The notion of a benevolent slaveholder is beyond stupid. And the notion that our state capital is just a different place where things happen but it’s OK — that has got to stop.

It’s far too easy to pick on Gov. David Paterson right now. The man is a complete train wreck as a public official. Leave his personality and “nice guy” platitudes out of the equation. We’re not paying him to be a nice guy. And we’ve paid him at least $2 million over the course of his career — all taxpayer money. It’s his actions as an elected official that count most, and his actions — and the actions of every state legislator — have brought us to this moment in time. I would say it’s our darkest hour, but I know tomorrow’s coming.

Someone recently defended Paterson by saying something like “if Spitzer never quit, none of this would even come out about Paterson.” As if that’s a defense. A person’s character and actions are not accidental. Whether a light gets shined on someone or they remain in the shadows, their character is the same. Somehow we’ve gotten to a point that people think actions are only bad if we see them, but the same actions are OK if they go unnoticed.

And that, in a nutshell, is our entire dilemma about our state politicians these days. The attitude that if no one knows we’re doing something, then it’s perfectly OK. It’s become our political culture, and it’s kept all of Western New York in an economic tailspin for at least the last 50 years. And we will not pull out of this — we will never become a vibrant region — until we address the cancer that is our political culture of corruption.

What’s flooding out of Albany about Paterson’s work habits, his governing style and his principles would get him fired from Wendy’s. And that’s part of how we view today’s political culture: many elected officials have never been off a public payroll in their entire adult lives. They are unemployable in the private sector, yet vote to give themselves raises and increased benefits on a regular basis.

Each state legislator controls a proverbial bag full of money that they — and only they — are responsible for giving out and that money — which is taxpayer money not their own personal piggy bank — gets used to buy off interest groups throughout their districts each year, making the election process a complete joke.

John Rigas was convicted of fraud for using the Adelphia funds as his own personal piggy bank. The next politician that wants government to be run more like a business ought to consider this.

This is a tough decision for all of us. It’s like having a friend who’s addicted to something and you know they are spiraling out of control. You desperately want to help them, and you even enable them for a time. They will tell you — with a perfectly straight face — that they are fine, but it’s other people who are the problem. How often have we heard that government is bad but our politician is good? Imagine if you worked at Wendy’s and ran a publicity campaign on the basis that eating beef is terrible but buy my hamburger?

Gov. Paterson started this week by stating categorically “I give you this personal oath: I have never abused my office — not now, not ever.” Only three days later the state ethics panel found him in violation of accepting free tickets to Yankees baseball games.

We have to realize that the only way to help our state politicians is to take their addiction away, and our state politicians are addicted to being in office. Bad performance, greed and corruption cannot be tolerated as our “culture” any longer.

Tom Christy is founder of FAIR Government, a foundation dealing with local government issues. Visit www.fair-government.org. Contact him at aim1986@mac.com.