BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg on Obama:
“He is frustrated because he cares about the small people, and we care about the small people…we care about the small people.”
It’s nice when the Galtian geniuses who run the world admit that this is how they see things.
Church Lady
I’m assuming English is not his first language.
Citizen Alan
I think it would be wonderful if a group of small people got together and chopped off his head with a bloody guillotine. Vive’ la Revolucion!
ChrisS
For fuck sakes, we’re already giving up our dividend. Jesus, what the hell is wrong with you people?
Face
I’m not understanding the blockquote’s controversy. They both care about midgets, clearly. What’s the prob?
licensed to kill time
So they care about Hobbits?
Oh, excuse me, he means The Great Unwashed. The Masses. Those Upon Whom Crumbs From Our Groaning Board Doth Occasionally Sprinkle.
ChrisS
1) Exponential population growth
2) Limited natural resources
3) Concentration of wealth
4) …
5) Utopia
Dork
People can hyphenate their first names?
Violet
They care about Leprechauns. Pots of gold and all that.
beltane
Couldn’t he at least have said “little people” like Leona Helmsley? It is demeaning to be called a small person.
NobodySpecial
I’m not small. Can I kick his ass to fix his oculars?
Violet
@Dork:
Yes. It must be common in Sweden. A well known football manager is Sven-Göran Eriksson.
PeakVT
Hell is too good for fuckers like that.
superfly
@ChrisS:
Fixed it.
Steeplejack
@Violet:
And in France: Jean-Luc, Jean-Pierre, Marie-Claire, etc.
Midnight Marauder
@Church Lady:
Tough shit for him.
But seriously, I can’t wait for that to take off as a Republican/Village talking point.
Ugh
He should have said “mass-challenged.”
jwb
Let’s drop a house on him and let the little people sing.
Ash Can
This is one of the times I agree with Church Lady. Non-native English speakers do talk like this, it doesn’t mean a damned thing, and this entire post is a non-issue. Seriously, everybody chill the fuck out.
Joseph Nobles
And how nice to tie Obama into all the Small-People-Caring going on.
Southern Beale
Can’t believe I would defend a BP exec but I’m going to assume he is not a native English speaker and the nuances of saying “the small people” were completely lost on him.
We’ve got bigger fish to fry, folks.
Martin
We care about small people. We want to use them to fuel power plants so they quit bitching about losing their fucking fisheries.
BP: Beyond Petroleum
jonas
Hey, I know how they feel. Giving a shit about the poor and unfortunate is really annoying, especially if you have to do it all week, or before a long holiday. That’s why rich white guys built country clubs — so they could unwind if having to deal with small people, like workers asking for a raise, stressed them out earlier in the day.
Hopefully Mr. Svanberg’s Gulfstream has a well stocked wetbar, so that this frustration won’t interfere with his decision making abilities.
DanF
Unless “ordinary” or “everyday” translates as “small” in Swedish, he should be forced to wear a turd on his head for the next seventy-five years.
David in NY
For those who would give this a pass as the awkwardness of a non-native speaker of English, I’d like to know what they think he meant to say that would not be not demeaning to the non-rich.
CT Voter
Small, little, short.
I hear Randy Newman in my head.
jonas
Ok, yes, had Mr. Svanberg been more fluent in American English, he might have said “we care about the ‘little guy’,” or something. I don’t think he was necessarily trying to be a smartass, but if there’s one thing BP’s actions over the past three months have belied utterly, it’s the notion that they care about “small people,” or “the little guy” or anything but their image and bottom line.
So we should feel free to have a little snarky fun at his expense, I think. For the small people.
licensed to kill time
@CT Voter:
Short people got no reason to live
they got tiny little hands and tiny little feet
tiny little cars that go beep beep beep
don’t want no short people ’round here
(beep BP? beep)
Nellcote
@David in NY:
small people=small businesses
He spoke with a distintive accent. I was surprised that he isn’t british.
ChrisS
Ray Zalinsky knew how to spew it:
DanF
@jonas: I think you’re right Jonas. It was probably a poorly executed “little guy”. Not that executing the little guy is necessarily a bad thing from BP point of view.
Sheila
Depends on how you define “small”. I suspect most corporate thugs are very small men on the inside, so of course BP cares about them.
Amir_Khalid
I’m not so inclined myself to blame Svanberg’s gaffe on a less-than-sure command of English. First of all, he’s educated, and educated Swedes usually speak excellent English. Second of all, he’s worked in London for years at the highest levels of a company with deep British roots. He wouldn’t be there – COULDN’T be there – if his English were at all iffy. I reckon this was a pretty straightforward incident of foot-in-mouth disease.
Violet
BP isn’t doing themselves any favors with their cultural and language missteps. This seems like more of a language issue than anything else. But it doesn’t mean that these highly paid oil execs don’t see the rest of the world as “little people.”
Zifnab
@Nellcote: I don’t know if I’d classify the Gulf Coast fishing industry as a “small business”. Any more than I’d refer to BP as a “minor oil company”.
Of course, speaking of himself in the same breath as Obama sounds less like an attempt to redeem BP’s actions and more like an attempt to belittle Obama. If I was the President (of the United States), I’d demand an apology.
cleek
small people got
no reason
small people got
no reason
small people got
no reason to live
they got little cars, little lives
they walk around tellin great big lies
they got no beach house, but lots of crime
and they think its ok
to drink box wine
no i
don’t want no small people
don’t want no small people
round here
matoko_chan
I am drinking Allahpundit’s delicious tears.
Mike Kay
Maybe he’s referring to oompa loompas.
JITC
@beltane:
Well as a physically small person, I don’t find it particularly demeaning to be me – but I knew you didn’t mean to insult short people.
Zifnab
What’s more, do we really need to justify taking cheap rhetorical shots at a BP exec? I mean, seriously? As a Gulf Coast resident, I consider it my solemn sworn duty to tell guys like Svanberg to go stick their dicks in a blender for any reason at all.
When the fucker is finished cleaning up my god damn back yard, maybe I’ll back off a peg.
Quicksand
@Mike Kay:
Living alongside that river of “chocolate milk. ” Actually that does start to make a little sense.
JITC
@DanF:
What if he really did mean “ordinary” and “everyday people” then what is he saying?
He seems to be attempting to minimize Obama’s frustration by saying “well he’s just fuming because he cares about everyday people so pay no never mind.”
In fact, if he did mean “ordinary everyday people” his comment is worse than implying “peons.” He’s saying, “well Obama just cares about Americans so I guess that’s why he’s so frustrated. Oh wait, I care about Americans too….yeah that’s what I meant.”
Nellcote
@Zifnab:
The fishing Industry is for the most part made up of small businesses. Large impact in total but still. There’s also the tourist Industry made up for the most part of small businesses.
But, yeah, I cringed when he said it.
Mike Kay
@matoko_chan:
Praise be to Allahpundit.
I will laugh so hard in the hippies face when C&T passes.
Midnight Marauder
@Ash Can:
@Violet:
It’s not even a language issue. It’s more of a “We just shit all over a major part of the United States of America’s cultural and economic infrastructure. Let me make sure I have my colloquialisms straight.” I get that he is a non-native speaker. But he is also the chairman of a company that has FLAGRANTLY disrespected this country’s environmental and economic well-being on a repeated basis over the last decade. If you are trying to demonstrate that your company actually gives a shit after almost two months of not giving a shit, then get the fucking basics of the language right.
Really, he’s a smart guy and he’s had plenty of time to figure out the best way to phrase his company’s response. He fucked up pretty tremendously with this one.
If it was “National Get A Mulligan Day,” Mr. Svanberg, you gets no mulligan.
Mike Kay
Maybe he was referring to Dennis Kucinich
matoko_chan
@Mike Kay: there will be much weeping and gnashing of teeth.
i can’t wait.
i am continually gobsmacked by the rightwingers deep inability to look 2 or 3 moves down the gamespace.
it just doesn’t seem mathematically possible that they are this dumb.
schrodinger's cat
Did he also ask them to eat cake?
Calouste
@Amir_Khalid:
He actually didn’t work for BP, he was the CEO of Ericsson. So no years of working in England, although I would be surprised if the CEO of a company like Ericsson didn’t have some kind of language coach. And of course most Swedes speak better English than your average Manucian.
robertdsc
Nothing a few Predator drones wouldn’t solve. Or better yet, the final scene in Eraser with the limo on the tracks.
maus
@Midnight Marauder:
You know exactly how the media will frame this. “Obama, in his ivory tower, doesn’t care about the “little people”, the proud patriots like you and me!”
@matoko_chan:
If you own the board and make the rules, you still win.
Mike Kay
sounds like he’s unaware of gary Coleman’s recent passing.
CT Voter
I can hear Joe and Mika talking about this tomorrow.
“Did Obama diss the everyday voter?”
BTW, how nuts is the reaction to Obama’s Oval office speech that Joe Scarborough sounded reasonable when interviewed later in the day on MSNBC?
Amir_Khalid
@Calouste: I have met some top-ranking Ericsson guys as part of my job, when I was a journo. Even the ones based in Sweden have most excellent English. Svanberg didn’t make a mistake with his English; what he did was reveal a condescending attitude towards the victims of BP’s negligence, same as Mr “I Want My Life Back” Tony Heyward.
Jules
Oh goody.
Something else for Keith and Tweety to be shrill about…
tkogrumpy
@Nellcote: Not surprising since most Europeans learn English from the Brits. With my German wife every thing was bloody this and bloody that.
bemused
@CT Voter:
Joe shocked me too. I kept waiting for his other shoe to drop but it didn’t. This has gotten personal for Joe being from Pensacola area. Sigh. People quickly change their tune when it hits close to home. I remember when Trent Lott’s Mississippi home got destroyed during the hurricane & suddenly suing the insurance company was aok for him. Never mind that tort reform business.
QuaintIrene
Hey, the smaller the better.
Southern Beale
Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh calls the $20 billion escrow account Obama secured from BP another “bailout” that will “go to ACORN.”
I mean they really go waaaay out on a limb to find something negative to say–making themselves look like assholes. Let’s not make the same mistake.
DonkeyKong
Whatever you do, do not fuck with the tiny people!
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@ChrisS:
I’ll tell you what. You can get a good look at a butcher’s ass by sticking your head up there. But, wouldn’t you rather to take his word for it?
CT Voter
@bemused: I didn’t realize he was from Pensacola. Funny that. Republicans appear to have no compassion for people in terrible situations until said Republicans are in those situations.
The opposite of empathy, I guess.
TaMara (formerly Bad Horse's Filly)
As one of the small people, I want him to know I am going to (hopefully) spend my birthday and meager small tourist dollars in New Orleans, to help out the other small people in the smallest way possible. We small people have to stick together.
Martin
@Southern Beale: It’s a dogwhistle – Rush (and Bachmann) are telling voters that Obama is going to funnel that $20B entirely to black people and not to whites.
Rush is just one massive GOTV effort for disaffected whites.
bemused
@Southern Beale:
He’s ridiculous but the sad thing that his groupies believe every word. Still, I can’t believe that he hasn’t lost at least some listeners that still have a few brain cells to notice bullshit like this.
MikeJ
@Martin: Last night in the speech when Obama used the word “reparations” I knew we we’re going to hear dog whistles.
maus
@bemused: All the listeners are hanging on *to* hear crap like this. It energizes them.
@MikeJ:
Oh what a stupid (if appropriate) choice of words.
Thaswede
It was just an error in translation from his part.
He tried to translate a Swedish saying into English and it went wrong. In Sweden we often say “den lilla människan” (lit: “the little human”) when we talk about someone or a group of people who either is up against larger forces or odds, or simply have been unfortunate enough to be caught in the middle between (much) bigger and more powerful players/forces/events
Ed Drone
@DanF:
And not the same one, either — it should be exchanged each morning for a fresh one.
Ed
matoko_chan
@maus:
nah.
like when the bourgie conservatives at the American Scene were all happy over Scott Brown, an’ i said….what is the dem countermove?
an’ i said….i bet this is going to starch up the dems and HCR will pass in reconciliation.
and that is ‘zactly what happened.
if one player says, i won’t play, then the other player gets a free move.
Obama is playing 11D chess and the republicans can’t even get their chess pieces out of the box.
fucen tarmal
you know, when you come down hard on people who accidentally tell the truth in public,(at least about how they see things) all you do is encourage more coded language and dog whistles…
i want these fuckers to say how they really feel about the gulf of mexico, mexicans, americans, and express exactly how much concern they actually have, or none at all, if that be the case.
fucen tarmal
dupe
Nick
You know, Honestly…I didn’t take it that way when he said it. I knew what he meant. I didn’t get the outrage or the “gaffe” thing for quiet a while.
arguingwithsignposts
@bemused:
And yet Mr. Lott was on MSNBC the other day defending Big Oil against those big, bad regulators who are takin’ ther jobz!
slag
@Thaswede:
I accept this explanation and don’t think any worse of the guy because of this statement.
But I am disappointed we aren’t going to meet the Lilliputians after all.
FlipYrWhig
I still don’t understand what was so outrageous about it. He said “small people” instead of “little guy,” and that’s throwing people into a tizzy? Seems like it should be mildly smile-inducing for about 4 non-consecutive seconds.
SRW1
Yes people, there’s potentially shit happening here, but that shit is not the ‘small people’. It’s the likelihood that $20 billion won’t be anywhere near enough to pay for the losses caused by BP. Has BP been given any assurances that this will be it?
kay
@FlipYrWhig:
I don’t get it either. Didn’t they have anything to ask him, or did they all run off to phone it in after he mangled a phrase?
Jesus. What was the point of talking to him, again? I guess this gaffe means he won’t do well in the Iowa caucuses.
Nick
@SRW1:
There’s no cap…If $20 billion isn’t enough, they pay more.
SRW1
@Nick:
Thanks. Sure hope that’s how it’s gonna be, because my understanding is that legally BP could fall back on the position that they are responsible for the clean-up, i.e. removing the oil, but not for other damages beyond $75 million.
Terrell
@Southern Beale:
Exactly. He apparently is from Sweden. Perhaps BP should be outraged for not hiring a better English speaking person to this important post.
But to make this an issue is silly. He obviously didn’t mean to say what he said. I would imagine it sounds perfectly fine in Swedish, but translated verbatim to English it sounds insulting.
Personally, I thought his speech was fine.
kay
@Terrell:
It’s just this sort of stupid knee jerk screeching and taking things out of context that we complain about all the time.
Our “national dialogue” isn’t going to get any better unless we resist falling for this outrage ‘o the hour tactic.
upset
@ChrisS:
for one your property just sh@t all over the coast of Louisiana. pick it up.