English equivalent for "easily blaming the person you dislike"

The closest proverb I know of is Give a dog a bad name (and hang him). It is usually seen from the dog's point of view: once you have a bad reputation, you will be blamed for everything that goes wrong. But equally of course, if 'you' are looking for someone to blame, it is easiest to find somebody you already disapprove of.


There are a number of possible expressions that can be used, however, keep in mind that not every culture has a local version of every expression used in other cultures. For example, your malayalam/indian example specifically mentions a woman (assuming the translation is correct) and the concept of 'not liking someone'.

Most western cultures seem to have equivalent expressions, but are broader in setup; they don't distinguish between men/women/children nor between liking or disliking a person, instead focusing on the very general observation that people are always more inclined to find faults in others than to 'see' their faults (a sort of Dunning-Kruger effect).

In Dutch, we have an expression that goes (translated) 'It's easier to see the splinter in someone else's eye than the stick in one's own'.

I think that in terms of idiom, this will be as close as you'll get.