Every public company exec worth his pay can come up with an excuse for poor performance in a quarter. AT&T execs did that this past week when they blamed a loss of more than 750,000 pay TV subscribers on cord-cutting. As an AT&T customer who plans on dumping the company soon, I’m calling BS. They are losing customers because after a limited-time special offer, they double your bill. They are losing customers because they still act like its 1967 and they are The Phone Company. They are losing customers because Americans love football.

We are all buffeted by market forces out of our control. “Measure of a Man” is an OK coming-of-age comedy, but it has one great line, “The measure of a man is his ability to navigate to a proper shore during the worst of the storm.”