Point Scoring Vs. Criticism

Nic White has made a stand against what he sees as the 'politicising' of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and Tim Dunlop at Road to Surfdom has more.

I think this post by Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings pretty much sums up my opinion of 'politicising' in this context:

Criticizing the administration's response to this or any other disaster is not 'politicizing' it. There are, I think, two ways of politicizing something. One is to drag politics into a discussion where it does not belong. Thus, if I decided to make a big issue out of Laura Bush's birthday party, that would be 'politicizing' it. I can't imagine in what possible world criticism of the administration's response to a catastrophe would count as 'politicizing' in this sense.

The other way is to use something to score cheap political points. Criticism of the administration's response to Katrina only counts as 'politicizing' if that criticism is motivated by partisanship, rather than by genuine outrage. Criticism of people as 'politicizing' the disaster is, fundamentally, a criticism of their character: it means either that they have allowed partisanship to skew their judgment, so that they overstate their criticisms, or that their motives are not grief, outrage, and anger, but a desire to score political points.

This is important. If all criticism of the administration were out of bounds, we would have no way of registering any of its failures.

Political football is not good, but genuine criticisms should not wait until the disaster is 'tidied up'. There is anger in the air and it's not just partisan name-calling.

NB: I apologise about the lack of trackbacks -- can someone au fait with TypePad help me out with this? I've tried following the destructions but it didn't work.

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