Cue Up The Blame Machine

I have a secret to tell.

I made a mistake at work today.

You did too probably.

Fortunately, our missteps didn't lead to the deaths of seven unsuspecting people.

But someone made a mistake on the job on Manhattan's Upper East Side a few days ago, and a construction crane collapsed, turning an otherwise lovely Saturday in New York's late winter into the scene of a national tragedy.

And for the last 48 hours, the local news is doing what local news always does -- looks for a scapegoat.

No matter which station you watch, those hometown anchors you love so much tell you go to their Web site and vote in surveys or leave your comments on a forum so we can all talk about whether we think safety precautions were sufficient there, as if we were familiar with that particular construction project before the collapse. It's far less of a discussion or conversation than an exercise in unanimity. I mean, are viewers of local TV news truly the collective authority when it comes to construction safety standards?

But that's the mentality of the the three-staged news cycle: Tragedy, Reaction and Blame. It's ridiculous, and it once again recalls the conversation about which came first: the public's need/want for this type of stuff, or the news agenda dictating the public's need/want?

Everyone makes mistakes at every workplace every day. Sure the logical perspective doesn't do much to bring back to life seven people who were sons, daughters, parents or siblings. I get that; I really do. As insensitive as it sounds, shit happens; life can indeed be unfair. I wish we could leave it at that, but when the shallow culture isn't obsessed with the sex life of a celebrity, or the sex life of a governor, or shoot, the sex life of the new governor now, the shallow culture is looking for someone to blame, humiliate and straight up destroy.