A Game the Whole Family Can Play!

"Let's not play the blame game." You hear that a lot during national debacles like the one down south -- usually from the people being blamed. "There's plenty of blame to go around." They say that a lot too.

It's become a commonplace in this country that no one is to blame. We're all human. Everybody screws up. Malicious behavior may deserve blame, but simple incompetence does not.

Nonsense. Incompetence is not always excusable. In this case, the incompetents are people we delegate to plan for large-scale emergencies so we don't have to spend all our time planning for them ourselves. If there's anyone who should be chosen on the basis of competence, it's the folks at FEMA. But it appears Michael Brown was chosen on the basis of his political connections. He's to blame for botching the operation. His superiors are to blame for hiring him.

And President Bush is to blame for a supreme act of incompetence. I hesitate to give more ammunition to the Bush-is-evil crowd, but he made the same mistake as Dr. Evil: "I'm just going to sit here and assume everything goes as planned. What?"

So this is one of those times when we need to point fingers -- now, not later -- to make sure incompetence doesn't happen again. We need to point the stern finger of blame and say, "You screwed up big time and people died needlessly. You should be ashamed of yourself."

Indeed, there is plenty of blame to go around. What fun! Fire up the shit-spreaders.