To: Various
Re: Current Situation in the Gulf of Mexico
From: Sgt Mom
1. To our various house-broken major-media news-hounds: So, here we have a situation, producing an oil leak from a busted oil well in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, of such a copious quantities that it has been described as the equivalent of the cargo of the Exxon Valdez every four days, and this has been going on for . . . . 60 days and counting? Yes, I know the crisis has come on a little slowly, not nearly as fast as Hurricane Katrina – after which then-President Bush had about two days grace before being raked viciously over the coals for not swinging into the federal government into action instanter than instant and fixing everything immediately! Exacting standards for performance in coping with the results of man-made and natural disasters should most certainly be applied for other than Republican administrations – and we are looking forward to see you apply them. Not holding my breath on it – but definitely looking forward to it.
2. Gratifyingly, there are definite signs of this dawning on those who have an ambition of being more than Baghdad Bob Gibbs press pool lap-dog. Perhaps this new awareness may have come in time to save y’all from the general impression that you are as partisan a collection of hacks who ever lightly edited a government/corporate press release and knocked off early for an expenses-paid luncheon. Or maybe not. And speaking of Robert Gibbs, doesn’t he just remind you of the fat, smug authority-figure suck-up from high school, whom hardly anyone could stand except for a handful of other authority-ass-kissing sycophants? The one who was beneath contemptuous notice by the athletes – but that the bad kids once ganged up on, pantsed, painted a rude, rude word on his pallid buttocks in indelible ink, administered a swirly in the nastiest toilet on campus and then chained him to the flag-pole? With his trou around his knees so that everyone could appreciate their lack of spelling skills?
3. So, don’t tell me that y’all in the White House Press Corps haven’t had that fantasy float through your heads. I have my ways of knowing these things. When you do, get footage of it, even if only on cell-phone cameras, please, please post on YouTube anonymously. You know the drill.
4. To the innocent citizens of the locality formerly known as Great Britain; I am sorry, sorrier than I can ever say . . . especially as this affects pensioners and ordinary investors – of both our countries who had investments in BP. Me, I thought we still had a rule of law, which applied equally to individuals and entities. The so-called ‘Chicago Way’ I had thought was confined to . . . well, Chicago. And gangster movies. I know very well that many of you indeed are not fat-cat capitalists, in frock-coats and top-hats, lighting your cigars with $50 bills, or the current Euro equivalent. The remarks of the current resident of the White House, and those of certain of our own citizens, and our own national media with regard to dreadful matter are, to put it kindly, unhelpful. I apologize again for them. I will note, for the record, that I did not vote for him. Believe it or not, quite a good few of us did not, so if you would be so kind, don’t lump us in with those Americans who were too starry-eyed over Mr. Hope’n’change to think straight.
5. I do wonder, however – if the situation were reversed, and a wholly American-owned drilling company experienced a disaster of the same magnitude in, say, the North Sea, and the resulting oil plume threatened your coastline – what the tenor of public and media comment in your sphere would be, then. Just wondering – I’m deeply cynical, that way. BTW, from the tone of British and European media coverage of Obama in the 2008 election season, I was left with the distinct impression that his victory being welcomed with hosannas of happy joy by one and all. How’s that hope’n’change working out for y’all? Miss GWB yet?
6. You know, seeing how the offer of efficient Dutch skimmer ships was turned down, how an exemption for the Jones Act to permit foreign ships to assist with the clean-up wasn’t obtained in a timely fashion, and how permits for the construction of sand berms to shelter fragile Louisiana coastal wetlands were delayed, and then the deployment of barges equipped to suck up oil were sidelined while the Coast Guard ascertained that they had sufficient safety gear on board, and how the well is still gushing . . . well, one might wonder if the continuance of this crisis is an advantage to the Obama administration. After all, Rahm Emmanuel famously urged that a good crisis shouldn’t be wasted. Shut down drilling for oil in the Gulf – which is a body blow for that industry – allow by inaction the fouling of the coastline, which affects tourism and local commercial fishing . . . My mother often cautioned me never to attribute to malice which could be easily explained by simple ineptitude, but in this case I might be persuaded to make an exception.
7. Finally, I would suggest that readers pick up some extra bags of frozen Gulf shrimp, the next time they are at Sam’s or Costco – the price is gonna go up, if it hasn’t already. But don’t forget – we can see November from our house.
Sincerely,
Sgt Mom
(Later – Found through Facebook link …
“if the situation were reversed, and a wholly American-owned drilling company experienced a disaster of the same magnitude in, say, the North Sea”…happened in the 1980s, and killed 165 workers. There is no record of Maggie Thatcher demonizing the American company that owned the platform.
Ah, David beat me to it. We’ve had the Torrey Canyon and Braer tanker disasters and, of course, the Piper Alpha explosion, all of which could have been painted as American in some way shape or form, and the subject of nationality never came up. So hopefully that assuages your wondering. My wonder is more that:
- Rahm Emanuel hasn’t started referring to BP as the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which is how it started life and would have the twin benefits of a) being no less accurate than calling it “British Petroleum” and b) playing the terrorist card all at the same time.
- BP hasn’t had the balls to tell Obama to shove it; that they would pay compensation to those affected in line with the law, perhaps using the $450m Union Carbide finally paid out for killing 16,000 Indians as some sort of guideline. Why on earth they bottled paying out the dividends which, at the end of the day, underpin both American and British workers’ pensions, is beyond me.
As for whether I miss GWB now, I might, in the same way that I might look back fondly on leprosy if I was briefly taken with a touch of ‘flu. Obama might have played the clown on this one – and you would be gratified by the number of newspapers here whose line was that we should just take all our troops out of Afghanistan and leave him with the mess – but on the whole I still think the economy’s the key thing. American sneezes, rest of the world catches a cold and all that, and he seems well on the way to sorting things out.
Well on the way to sorting things out, Al – er… not from where I stand.
In fact, his administration seems well on the way towards karking them up on an absolutely epic scale.
I live in Texas, remember? The Daughter Unit and I are planning a brief summer holiday sometime in the next summer months. I have a contract for some bespoke writing which should allow me to take a day or so, down on the Texas Gulf Coast. With luck, we shall not have to walk past too many oil-covered sea-bird corpses, or the pathetic camps of too many out-of-work oil-industry workers.