The Rude Pundit: On the Oil Spill, "Make It Right" Is Meaningless

[meegbear]

Could BP (or everyone else) stop pretending like there is any way to "make this right." There's no way to make it right. Ever. Tony Hayward could go door to door along the Gulf Coast, giving blow jobs and eating pussy until his jaw is distended and his belly is bloated, and BP wouldn't even have gotten started on making it right. You can't. What's going to happen over the next couple of months is going to upend industries, towns, states, and cultures. Make it right? How about just shutting the fuck up and working?

This is all a fatuous PR game played by BP that, until the last couple of days, the administration has played along with. Hell, Admiral Thad Allen parroted the BP line until a week ago. The amount of oil being leaked, the seeming early success of the top kill, the very images themselves from the deep - it's all been media manipulation to buy BP stock a little more time.

See, when we say we want President Obama to "do something," it's not that we think he personally knows how to stop the oil. What we want him to do is to say, flatly, "Stop listening to BP. They have given you no reason to trust them." He could continue, "They are liars and thieves and murderers who willfully ignored safety and put profit ahead of the lives of their workers. To them, the ocean's only as good as what's under its floor." It ain't about PR then. It's about demonstrating that the government is in control. Add into that assuring that the media is being given free access to the spill. Let us know that we're not being controlled by an oil company. It's about treating BP like the criminal enterprise it is. Finally, Obama has shoved BP aside as the information source, for the most part; we still have to hear their overly optimistic estimates about what percentage of oil is being captured when we still don't even really know how much oil is being released.

But this is also a political game, and Democrats need to be playing it more forcefully. Republicans who don't want to lift liability caps on oil companies should be portrayed as traitors to the working people of America. Rep. Charlie Melancon, whose chances at taking BP abettor and Pampers enthusiast David Vitter's seat have increased exponentially, said yesterday, "I don't care if it's a dictator, a king, a democracy, I can't imagine (another country) allowing any oil company to go out and do wily-nilly what was done in the Gulf of Mexico and is being done to the United States and this state." And, in a line that should be the retort to any member of Congress who says a raised or eliminated liability cap will drive small oil companies out of the deep water drilling business, Melancon said, "If you can't afford to play in the deep water, you shouldn't be out there."

It's slash and burn time, man. Take 'em down. Like Haley Barbour, Mississippi's governor who has said media coverage is scaring away the tourists while his state's beaches remain mostly oil-free? Tell 'em to eat some fish from Waveland. Or maybe he thinks the kids'll have fun chasing the greased pelicans in Biloxi.

"Make it right" is a bullshit phrase. Ask anyone whose lover fucked another man and then promised to make it right. Ask anyone who owed money to a drug dealer but said he'd make it right. There's uncorrectable wrongs in this life. Make it better? Maybe. Right? You're delusional.

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/

[SammyWinstonJack]

1. K&R

[damntexdem]

2. How much of the Gulf's environment will be lost?

How much damage will be done to local economies?

How much land will be lost to the sea as the oil kills off ground cover from low-lying land? How much will be lost to hurricanes as a result of the loss of protective low-lying land.

How widely will the oil spread in the Atlantic; and how much will be lost there?

How could humans ever 'make it right.' If they can, how many centuries will it take?

[liberalmike27]

3. Hmmmm

It's funny how it is always the media's coverage that screws things up, according to the right-wing, instead of the actual reality.

[gratuitous]

4. Isn't it odd how the media can fixate on this?

Watch the coverage: Are you seeing compelling visuals? You’re sure as shit not seeing oil-covered fauna; what are the media showing you? Angry residents, for sure. A lot of shots of the restless waters of the Gulf. Some folks saying they’re angry – at the government, but not BP! A few shots of people “cleaning up” the beaches. And a lot of corporate mouthpieces talking about how things are going to get better, oh, just any second now. Stops you in your tracks, huh?

Compare and contrast with what you recall of the coverage in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Every time there was someone complaining about the bodies in the streets or the fact that they hadn’t had a decent meal or even a drink of water for days, there were four or five clips of federal government officials all congratulating each other on their stellar performance. There were a few aerial shots early on, but those ended pretty quickly. And in spite of the alarming visuals available for the shooting, there just wasn’t a lot of footage being shown on the teevee. Certainly not anywhere near the amount of time they’ve spent in the last month filming the churning water in the Gulf.

And whenever some BP official comes out to tell us how wonderful things are going, we’re treated to endless footage of hopeful comments, which are only dashed within hours (or minutes) of their utterance. Until the next hopeful pronouncement, which is treated with the same mix of hope and optimism, as if the last 50 fuck-ups never happened.

Yet the popular media have the nerve to tell us that they can’t possibly cover such a complex issue as financial reform or the health care legislation or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because they’re just, oooh, too complicated! But you hear even the bubble-heads at Fox sounding like experienced petrochemical engineers whenever it suits BP to trot out another round of false hopes.

[snagglepuss]

5. RP nails what Obama isn't doing:" Let us know that we're not being controlled by an oil company."

Brilliant piece, a perfect comeback for the cheerleaders who endlessly ask what Obama is supposed to do.

Thanks for posting.

[meegbear]

6. kick