To politicize or not politicize.

After last week’s tragic accident in Cottonwood, MN where a van crashed into a school bus, killing four children, there has been sadness…and outrage. Outrage over the fact that the woman driving the van, it was learned later, was an illegal immigrant. Not surprising, given the seemingly out of control illegal immigration problem that has gripped this country for years now.

But the richest part of the fallout from the news coverage of the Cottonwood tragedy came from Star Tribune hack columnist Nick Coleman. He apparently is fuming over the fact that a tragic event is being politicized.

But at a time like this -- when anger is tinged with racism and resentment in a season of charged political debate -- it is important to think carefully about what measures might help public safety, and what might hurt it.

The focus right now should be on the loss of four children, and the enormous grief suffered by the families and the town. But anger is powerful. Some people have moved on already, from mourning to murder.

I have a question here. When the 35W bridge collapsed almost seven months ago, that was also a tragic event, correct? At that time, Coleman surely must have thought it was important to think carefully about what measures might help public safety (i.e. learning the cause of the collapse to ensure another structure doesn’t meet the same fate), and what might hurt it. The focus should have been on the loss of thirteen people, and the enormous grief suffered by the families and the rest of the Twin Cities.

So if we indeed apply the same Nick Coleman logic to the bridge collapse as he applied to the Cottonwood tragedy, then certainly he didn’t politicize the bridge collapse, right?

Let’s go back in time, shall we? How did Coleman respond to the outcries of not politicizing the 35W bridge collapse, less than a week after the tragedy?

If you think everyone should play nice about it, you are living in Pollyanna Land. We are in a bare-knuckled political brawl in this country, and the government is in the hands of government haters who want to starve it or, in the alleged belief of presidential ally Grover Norquist, want to “drown it.”

You can’t drown government. It is people who drown.

A Nick Coleman column: your one-stop shop for all that’s disingenuous.

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