WSJ.com - Moving On

More on the blame game (subscription required)...
WSJ.com - Moving On: "The urge to blame is an innate human impulse dating back a million years or more. It's an impulse that travels through our bodies to our fingertips, as we all saw in the frenzied finger-pointing over Hurricane Katrina."...

Modern America is beset by blame-mongering. At ShiftTheBlame.com, you can buy a "calibrated blame-shifting device" for $2.95. It's a giant foam hand with the words "It's your fault!" on the pointer finger. Run by East Bank Communications, an ad agency in Portland, Ore., the Web site offers tongue-in-cheek mantras: "You have everyone but yourself to blame." "It's not you, it's the printer." The jokes ring true because finding fault is an American preoccupation.

We're a litigious society, obsessed with assigning dollar amounts to blameworthy actions. For entertainment, we used to sing "Blame It on the Bossa Nova" -- now we turn to radio and TV talk-show pundits, who revel in blame games and accusations. And we're fluent in the language of culpability: Ralph Nader was blamed for Al Gore's 2000 presidential defeat, because he siphoned away votes. Your spouse is blamed if you're unhappy. Our parents are blamed for everything.

The right to criticize leaders is a great gift of our democracy. But this freedom to find fault means that even "acts of God" such as Katrina need a human face, says Eric Dezenhall, a crisis-management consultant in Washington, D.C. "Every event must have a villain, a victim and a vindicator in order for our culture to understand it. History is calamity-driven, but Americans feel these things shouldn't happen here, and someone must be at fault."...

Because the crisis in New Orleans revealed the depths of urban poverty, "perhaps the finger-pointing will lead to an effort to rebuild all our cities," says James Morone, a Brown University political-science professor. "I'm not sure the bickering is so terrible. In a sense, it's a fundamental values debate about the direction American society will take."

Of course, politicians may take the low road, pursuing what Prof. Morone predicts could be "a fight to the death in search of Katrina villains."

They'd all do well to consider an old adage: When you point a finger at someone else, your other fingers point toward you.