This was exceedingly stupid:
One depressing aspect of the economic crisis is that public outrage has been channeled into symbolic displays of populist outrage against CEOs rather than into intelligent public action to prevent the recurrence of disasters. The response to the Deepwater Horizon spill fits the pattern. The outrage du jour is that BP CEO Tony Hayward has taken a break from overseeing efforts to contain an oil spill to take in a yacht race.
I fail to understand the controversy. Does anybody assert that Hayward needs to be working seven days a week, every week? I doubt his role is actually so indispensable. So then is the outrage that, in his free time, he is indulging in the sort of activity available only to very wealthy men? I also fail to see how the crisis should force Hayward to pretend not to be rich.
Nobody really wants to make the case that Hayward can never relax, or that he can’t spend his own money as he sees fit when he does relax. So instead the “controversy” is that it creates an appearance of a controversy. It’s a fully postmodern scandal.
I actually disagreed with DougJ last week about the “flap” in which the BP exec said he was worried about the small guy, and everyone piled on him for his “Dickensian gaffe.” For goodness sakes- every Democratic primary around the nation is littered with folks claiming they are looking out for the little guy, and when a foreign BP exec says that he and Obama are looking out for the “small guy,” everyone freaks the fuck out. Spare me.
Sadly, though, so much of our politics has devolved into this kind of nonsense. We don’t actually care what policies are enacted, we care how they are enacted. Did Obama stick it to the Republicans? Was he angry enough with BP? Is he showing enough emotion? Can he “connect” with the white voter and “joe-sixpack?” Is he throwing the base “a bone?” Did he say “climate change” and use the right code words? Was he “friendly” enough to Israel?
I wish it would all stop, but the idiocy of the conservative right is matched by the progressive left in this regard.
Cynickal
Does anybody assert that Hayward needs to be working seven days a week, every week?
No, I assert he should be used to plug the well. But I’m just an idiot progressive.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
My impression of Hayward is someone who has trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time. How this dude got to be CEO of one of the world’s largest corporations is beyond me, and I could care less if he kept his ass in England reposed in a hammock under a Ginko tree sucking down tea and crumpets.
On the broader point of the asinine nature of our political discourse, it is like a never ending episode of Seinfeld. What are you gonna do?
Christian Sieber
Except that the progressive left has think tanks who actually think and put out policy papers based on what might actually work?
Come on John, you know better. :)
El Cid
Has it really devolved? Is it mostly the same as it has often been? I’m trying to think of popular outrage demonstrations which were much more systematically focused on some positive agenda of structural change against elitist economic policies in the last couple of decades. Which ones am I forgetting?
El Cid
By the way, I bet there are plenty of people in the Gulf region who have been working 7 days a week, and most of them because that’s what they had to do to get by, and now a few more are doing so because of a massive, massive horrific emergency situation. I don’t think it’s so rare in the midst of catastrophe to work 7 days a week. Hell, I’ve had to work like that weeks in a row just because the companies were busy. I’m not suggesting that having Hayward work more would do the least bit useful, but the notion that 7 day weeks in the midst of an utter emergency is some bizarre cruelty seems to me the product of people not used to having to work 7 day weeks when it works out that way.
Violet
Aack. Did I break the thread? I didn’t use any bolds, unjoined hyphens/dashes or italics. I promise.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
El Cid, you broke the internets, check you code, check your code.
edit, though it could have been Cole with his bolding. I don’t know.
Calouste
The BCC puts Hayward’s sailing trip in perspective :
3 May:
“Well, it wasn’t our accident, but we are absolutely responsible for the oil, for cleaning it up, and that’s what we intend to do.”
14 May
“The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.”
18 May
“But everything we can see at the moment suggests that the overall environmental impact of this will be very, very modest.”
30 May
“We’re sorry for the massive disruption it’s caused their lives. There’s no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back.”
The man is a leading contender for inaugural Micheal S. Steele Gaffemachine of the Year award.
Incertus (Brian)
Yeah, actually, I do. Or if he isn’t, he can at least have the good fucking taste to not be flaunting his extraordinary wealth while his oil well is damaging the economies and ecosystems of at least 4 states, and perhaps a good chunk Atlantic seaboard eventually. If he wants to spend days sitting in his luxury condo jerking off and playing video games, that’s fine, but don’t be out there watching your fucking yacht come in 4th.
And name the yacht something other than Bob, for fuck’s sake.
jl
Cole forgot to mention the corporate media.
Chait discusses the role of the media and uses an AP story as an example.
I have my own example, as in blowing more than five minutes on the yacht race on Face the Nation this Sunday. Courtly ol’ Bob wanted to get the reaction of his distinguished guests to the yacthing outrage.
I was going to defend the leftosphere, but decided to do a google search, just to do a little homework.
Ooops!
The Well Oiled Man Hayward Goes Yachting As Gulf of Mexico Dies
Firedoglake
bmaz
June 19, 2010
(no link)
But, still I think that wasting space in an AP story, and wasting time on a national news show, is worse than a few snarky posts with Gilligan’s Island pics in the leftoblogosphere.
Beware the false balance, my son.
El Cid
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: I took out every italics or anything. Don’t think it was mine. Though I like the notion of having such rampant power.
Comrade Mary
OH MY GOD THE ENTIRE PAGE IS LEANING TO THE RIGHT WE’RE DOOMED IN NOVEMBER OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD!
(EXCEPT ME, STANDING STRAIGHT AND TALL LIKE A GOOD CENTRIST!)
I hate HTML. And don’t get me started on CSS.
Violet
And now my post has vanished, but the thread is still effed. I don’t think it was my post. I didn’t use anything questionable. Unless there’s some new rule that I broke about what we can use and not use.
New Yorker
I do wish Obama would do more to channel his inner FDR and connect the Deepwater Horizon disaster with that recent deadly mine explosion in WV and Goldman Sachs ripping off its own investors and build a narrative of how this is what we get when we deregulate everything.
I know, I know, the Village would complain that he wouldn’t connect with Real Americans that way, but I do think Obama is missing out on a gift handed to him by the criminals/incompetents of corporate America.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@El Cid: maybe the mighty FSM is just having a bad day.
Comrade Mary
Wait, did I just fix things by accident?
EDIT: Nope. If you’re the last comment in the thread, it looks OK, but once someone posts after you, you’re screwed. And askew.
Violet
Patrick’s post has unattached dashes. Is that the problem?
eemom
@Cynickal:
This is actually all that needs to be said on this topic. However, I suspect it won’t be.
cleek
politics is not about logic and sense. it is about emotion.
the quicker you realize that, the better.
Violet
@Comrade Mary:
I’m using Firefox and you’re still italicized in my view. And your post is in All Caps.
MikeJ
The idiots on TV are going to talk about whatever stupid story is out there that makes somebody look bad. We can make a deserving target look bad, or we can wait for more “Obama should be kicking ass!”, “Obama said ass!”
Since they can only follow one thing at a time, kick the soccer ball the way we want it to go so the 6 year olds will follow it.
trollhattan
It’s perhaps useful in a perverse fashion to remind the little peeps that this is what a member of the oligarchy does after being publically spanked: carry on with his gilded life, just as before.
No unemployment line, no going to the NIH for his flu jab, no losing his home, no greeter stint at Walmart, no SpaghettiOs for breakfast. Nope, just sailing his big fucking boat (or rather, having somebody sail his big fucking boat ala Larry Ellison).
It makes the staunch Republican defense of BP seem even more jaded, which I’d thought impossible.
trollhattan
@eemom:
“Junk Shot!”
jl
Except I forgot that in the wider context Cole is talking about, especially the leftosphere’s Obama betrayal meme, the left is almost, though not quite IMHO, as bad as the rightwing.
But the post should really mention the media’s role in the frivolity.
Violet
Can anyone else see my post at 7? On my view on Firefox, it now goes from 6 (patrick’s post) to 8 (El Cid’s post), with no post number 7 appearing at all. Italics start at Post 8.
Kryptik
Honestly, I think the issue with the yachting stuff is a bit more of a followup on the gall people felt when he said he ‘wanted his life back’. If it was just the yacht thing, I doubt there’d be as much blowback.
As far as the obsession with CEOs being punished over public policy, I think there, the issue is the fact that we haven’t gotten either, and it’s a lot easier to shame CEOs than get through the thick skulls in Washington, and it kinda took public outrage over the rich folks before we even got a handful of Congressmen to think ‘hey, maybe we should do something’, even if only to save their jobs. Unfortunately, it ends up kind of hollow thanks to those willing to stonewall any kind of genuine reform.
JL
“..the idiocy of the conservative right is matched by the progressive left in this regard”.
Like what? Specifically.
The progressive* left criticism of the administration cannot fairly be reduced to a whine about a lack of emoting by the president. James Carville is not a progressive*. On the other hand, Robert Reich is (or so I think). He has advocated that BP should be placed in temporary receivership. You may disagree, but it’s an articulated point of view, hardly idiotic.
*Do you have a problem with the term “liberal”? If so, I will submit you’ve been buffaloed by decades of transparent republican propaganda.
cleek
@Violet:
it’s in the HTML for the page, but it’s not being rendered. either your post or the one above it broke the layout.
Violet
@cleek:
I don’t think it was my post, as I didn’t include any of the usual prohibited items in it, I don’t think. I’ve tried to give up using hyphens and dashes altogether. Hard habit to break.
Sorry everyone if it was me.
Mark S.
@Violet:
Yeah, no 7 (FF). Weird.
And fuck Hayward. You don’t go yachting, or play polo, or go sit in your luxury box at the World Cup when you’ve just destroyed the Gulf and expect people not to call you an asshole.
Toast
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Color me utterly unsurprised. On the list of tools you need to move up the corporate ladder, intellectual firepower ranks pretty low.
El Cid
You know, I’ve been on the left a long time, and one of the most common criticisms of any public protest and movements have been a focus on either negative (stop the such & such) campaigns or on more surface level stuff.
If Chait thinks he’s making a new point, he’s massively into some sort of hallucinogen.
Second, read this again:
Oh really? Is that all? We just need to figure out how to get public outrage (presumably including some sort of grassroots participation, because otherwise it’s just lobbying or election campaigns) focused on some sort of long-term vision and legislative etc. program to prevent the recurrence of disasters?
Well, fuck, why didn’t anyone think of this before? Hell, that ought to be easy. Why has no one done this sort of thing before? We probably can just do some direct mailing and e-mailing and a couple of ads and we’ll surely have grassroots meetings of millions of people planning a farsighted program of legislative campaigns.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Violet:
Pure evil, no question about it. :-)
trollhattan
@Violet:
I don’t see a post 7 (IE8), so perhaps you worked some sort of htm magik?
Tunch will get grumpy with all these italics running around. Sarah will blog (er, make that tweet) that the Italic immigration occurred at a time the USA needed the workers, not like now with the Mexicoans.
Jay B.
You can’t do both? The Masters of the Universe ruin the entire fucking planet, get paid nearly infinite sums to fail (I’ll introduce you to Carly Fiorina sometime) and bitch about even the most modest regulatory incursions anyone suggests.
If anything, we suffer from CEO worship and our government has allowed this disease to fester (the CEO Executive!). Who the fuck do you think funnels BILLIONS into fighting “intelligent public action”? The emo left? Or Billionaire CEOs like Murdoch, the fat pig who runs Exxon and the thieving fuckers who run Goldman Sachs?
But yes, it’s the LEFT that’s really the problem, demanding accountability AND action, despite not worshipping the criminal culture of corporate CEOs.
Fuck you.
The Other Chuck
We’re not expecting Hayward to fix the problem. We already know he can’t do that. We’re expecting to put him in the poorhouse, like what’s going to happen to tens of thousands of people in the gulf. I refuse to apologize for wanting that.
Zifnab
You’re confusing the media blather with the actual national concerns. People want to see Obama take serious legal action against BP, and they take tough language as a sign of tough action. When he doesn’t talk tough, we assume he isn’t doing anything administratively.
When Obama refuses to use key phrases, like “climate change” or when he fails to properly stroke Israeli ego, we see this as a reflection of his stance on forthcoming legislation. Will the new climate bill have cap-and-trade if Obama can’t bring himself to say the phrase “cap-and-trade” in yet another sad turn of the energy crisis? Can Israel expect it’s normal $3 billion / year weapons-buying stipend if Obama isn’t kowtowing to the Israeli Prime Minister?
Words mean things. And we are constantly reading the tea leaves our politicians leave behind, trying to anticipate where their motives lay.
Adam Collyer
Well, at least the italics are pretty….
There are plenty of people that will make this case though. They may have legitimate reasons or they may just be angry that he can enjoy his “time off.”
Of course, we’re assuming that this is “time off.” But aren’t these substantially similar to the complaints on the Right that President Obama shouldn’t meet with non-political figures in the White House while the spill clean up is going on? At some point, you have to assume that CEOs of trillion dollar companies and Presidents are able to multitask. They don’t really get days off, just days they aren’t in the office.
While Hayward really isn’t a compelling case for his public statements, I’d be hard pressed to say that he can do anything on site at the oil spill that he can’t do while watching a yacht race. He’s not the expert. He’s not the scientist. He’s a businessman and an executive.
He’s also a dick and has no idea how to properly show compassion and contriteness, but that’s entirely different, isn’t it? Would it really be better if he was sitting in his office waiting for updates from his people on the ground? Or even better: would it be more efficient for him to lord over the entire clean up when he has no expertise whatsoever?
The optics are terrible, but maybe we should stop looking at the optics and just start judging people based on merit. That Tony Hayward is a failure as a CEO currently has nothing to do with him attending a yacht race.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
You forgot to include Truth, Justice, and the American way.
Bill Section 147
Well the “appearance of constant working” idea is pretty old and runs across the economic spectrum. I cannot count the times when some well meaning person started discussing (name any major project) with an aside about shovel-leaners. Of course none of them have actually done any road work, asphalt or pipe laying…but in the five or so minutes they drove by the work site those guys were just standing around.
So, as long as the oil is spewing I expect Tony and every BP Exec to appear to be working when I pay attention for five minutes or so. It is my right as a complainer.
I think the pundits jabbered about it because they are the only people who actually work 24/7.
MikeJ
@Adam Collyer:
Actually he’s a geologist who got promoted to businessguy.
numbskull
Actually, yes, I have a problem with Hayward or any of them enjoying themselves while there is so much work to be done.
They do not understand that they, personally, are at fault. They do not understand that the decisions they made led directly to this catastrophe. But it is true. Their decisions led to this catastrophe. They directly and personally are responsible for the accident. Period. Who else do you think made the decisions that surrounded how BP went deep water drilling?
I understand that they don’t have the ability, the skill, the knowledge, the what-have-you, to stop the leak. OK. Fine. Nobody does.
But given that Hayward and the other execs PERSONALLY caused this by developing and enacting the policies and protocols in which they went deepwater drilling with no real disaster planning, why yes, I think that they should personally be down on the Gulf shores washing birds, mopping up shit, shoveling sand, seven fucking days a week. If they cannot add one whit to solving the leak, their scrawny white asses should be down on the Gulf, shovel in one hand and bucket in the other. They should be doing everything they can to mitigate the disaster. Everything, no matter how small that effort might be.
You know, if I make a mess in my neighbor’s yard, I clean it up. Period. I don’t go on vacation. I don’t fuck around. I take care of the problems I create. If that means pulling all-nighters or skipping a boat race or three, so be it.
And you know what, so would you John.
So why give any of these shitheels the benefit of the doubt? If they can’t plug the leak, at the VERY least, they should be personally involved in the clean up, and I mean very personally.
Toast
Thirty five comments later, and italics are still spewing into the blogosphere. If only Obama had the willpower to fix this.
Martin
I’d attribute it to frustration with two things:
1) The growing income disparity in this country. It’s not just Hayward/yachting but also the Wall Street CEOs with their Legacy seats at Yankee Stadium. Conspicuous consumption by the rich is not tolerated much these days.
2) The fact that you can’t have a yacht race in much of the gulf right now. There is at least some degree of direct ‘fuck you guys with your oily water – I’m taking my yacht over here where it’s cleaner’ in his choice of activities. Again, Tony will not have a career in PR after this.
But I’m not going to apologize for those on the left that are pissed off about the income disparity. It’s a serious problem in this country and it leads to all manner of social problems. You’re seeing some of that effect right here, and rightfully so.
Violet
Oh, wow. Now post number 6 is missing. This thread has gone nuts.
John Cole
@Violet: Yes- I deleted your comment and mine, trying to figure it out.
Midnight Marauder
@Kryptik:
Precisely.
On this point, while I appreciate the argument Cole is making, we can’t pretend like the yacht race issue just materialized out of the ether somehow. People are clearly reacting to an established indifference/insensitivity that seems to be a large part of who Tony Hayward is as a human being. The same part of his brain that signed off on saying “I would like my life back,” is the same part that signed off on deciding “You know, I’m already one of the most vilified
plutocratspeople on the planet. Why not appear at the J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race, only one of the world’s largest yacht races that attracts more than 1,700 boats and 16,000 sailors as world-renown yachtsmen compete with wealthy amateurs in the 50-nautical mile course around the island? Surely, the world will grant me this small bit of happiness.”On a whole, it’s representative of the mentality BP has exhibited for years, which is that they really don’t give a fuck about anything; that they are wholly oblivious and tone-deaf to basic human traditions like compassion and empathy; that they are some of the most shameless liars human civilization has ever seen; but, most importantly, that they really, really don’t give a fuck about anyone or anything not tangibly related to increasing BP’s bottom line.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@John Cole: it worked.
El Cid
Hey! I got an idea!
I say we nominate Chait to head the committe for figgerin’ out how to get that latter part goin’! He’s smart. Surely it ain’t that hard.
Mark S.
How can someone who writes about politics for a living like Chait not realize that public perception is important? “Let them eat cake”? Bush playing guitar while New Orleans was going under?
Steve V
I basically agree with you, but I still cracked up at Harry Shearer’s song riffing on the “small people” thing yesterday.
Mark
What’s with the false equivalence?
The progressive left says the health care reform package was developed by the Heritage Foundation and was insufficiently funded and takes too long to come into effect. The conservative right says Obama is a [fill in the blanks] because he implemented the Heritage Foundation’s health care plan.
I don’t see the comparison.
fucen tarmal
i think there is value in the statement it makes, if your heyward, which is “i simply don’t give a fuck”. it also suggests that his name and presence are not as toxic at home, as they are here…translation, the english don’t give a fuck….if they thought what he did was wrong he would have been politely begged not to show up. happens here with scandal ridden people, and we are just ugly americans….there is substance in that.
now should this, or his soundbites be the major story on this topic for today? no. there is substance to the news about the gaping hole in the gulf, and the containment efforts.
isn’t it post post-modern victim blaming to complain that people are writing that people might be complaining? no, the actions of bp and everyone identifiable with that company are on watch. sorry but he doesn’t have to fight for the right to be rich. it is a measure of what this cat is about, what he does however. there is a difference between “duly noted”, and “we demand that you don’t”.
again, should the media focus on the “optics” as much as they should?probably not, for people who want serious coverage. but this is a part of the story. its far more accessible than flow rates and blow out preventers and everything else….
Alan in SF
Speaking for “The Progressive Left,” we really don’t give a shit about Hayward’s yachting break. Do you think the progressive left was shocked to find out that fabulously wealthy CEOs have yachts? It was purely a media firestorm.
NobodySpecial
Note to Cole for future reference: Tweety is not of the ‘progressive left’, so you can stop that one right now, k?
No, I’d be willing to bet the average ‘progressive lefty’ is more like me. We don’t want him working, because we know he’s an overprivileged git with no useful skills to anyone besides fluffing. Plus, him working might actually make things worse, because that’s what Captains of Industry do.
No, we don’t want him working. We want him to take a tour of the Gulf, being dragged behind Bob. At about 20 knots. That’s a good start.
Elisabeth
This.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@NobodySpecial: Oh looky, the progressive butthurt posse has arrived for some justice.
kc
I can kind of understand the outrage. Seeing as how the Deepwater Horizon lacked a blowout preventer that would have cost $500,000, and Hayward’s salary is close to $5 million, and BP has just befouled a huge swath of our coast and the Gulf. And then BP repeatedly dissembled about the magnitude of the leak and the extent of the damages. So when Hayward, after putting his foot in his mouth numerous times, takes a vac to watch the his yacht race in the J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race (!), I can see why people get pissed off.
True, getting pissed off at how Hayward spends his free time is no substitute for “intelligent public action,” as Chait says. But then again, neither is getting huffy about people who are pissed off about how Hayward spent his weekend.
Jay B.
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
OK, then I’ll throw it in:
You and Cole would probably faint if someone spoke like that today, so counterproductive! So stupid. So like the far right.
Thankfully, FDR didn’t worry about offending the other side.
mr. whipple
@The Other Chuck:
LOL. If this is what people are hoping(also in the case of people like the banksters), you are in for a life of anger and disappointment.
There are different rules for the rich. Always has been, always will be.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Jay B.: The brilliance of your purity hurts my eyes.
slag
For the record, I care about both. The What takes precedence over the How most of the time, but I still think both are required. It’s important to me that Democrats elucidate liberal values, and it’s important to me that they enact liberal policies. I’m sorry if that offends your delicate sensibilities.
celticdragonchick
@Calouste:
Exactly.
Sailing your multi million dollar racing yacht is one thing.
Doing after your company turns a big chunk of the ocean into an oil sump and then complaining you “want your life back” makes you into Shakespearean class villain/asshole.
Bob L
“One depressing aspect of the economic crisis is that public outrage has been channeled into symbolic displays,…”
The writer of that article even understands what politics is?
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@slag: Perfumed sausage is still sausage.
numbskull
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: Oh, I don’t know. Hayward may be a nominally useful sea anchor. Maybe if they dress him in his best linens, he might even soak up a little oil. Make for great TV, though…
celticdragonchick
@NobodySpecial:
I love you.
NobodySpecial
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: Ah, your eternal battle cry: Nothing Can Be Done.
That should be carved on your tombstone.
Jay B.
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
You don’t even know what you’re supporting. I’m not against what Obama’s doing. I’m simply against the idea that people can’t be mad at CEOs in public AND pursue “public solutions”.
CEOs are at the heart of the problem in America. You’d have to be a complete and terminal moron to not understand this.
Tax Analyst
Yeah, this is where the political sphere has gone completely haywire. Yes, there has always been political posturing. But no, it has not always been to this extreme and constant extent. I remember a time when there actually were issues and situations that were considered serious enough to draw the opposing parties together to work towards the common good and were considered, at least for the moment, to be too important for politicizing. But that was before today’s version of the Republican Party – which has decided that for political gain (which apparently is the only thing that matters today to the GOP) it must strongly oppose anything the President or his party supports, and also before the established punditry became fixated and attached to all the petty “gotcha” bullshit that has taken the place of reasoned assessment in journalism.
Its all part of the sorry sack of shit that the American Public has now become accustomed to finding on its front porch every morning.
jl
I hope this kind of thing does not count as yacht baiting, because I want to hear more stuff like this all the way to the election, and I want it reported too:
Steve King: Joe Barton Was ‘Spot-On’ When He Called BP Fund A ‘Shakedown’ (AUDIO)
Jillian Rayfield
TPM
June 21, 2010,
‘ “I think Joe Barton was spot-on when he called it a shakedown,” said King. ‘
http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/06/steve-king-joe-barton-was-spot-on-when-he-called-bp-fund-a-shakedown.php?ref=fpb
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@NobodySpecial: We will put on your headstone “He was for all for everything and ended up with nothing”
celticdragonchick
@Midnight Marauder:
Indeed. The guy is a walking caricature of a bloated, 19th century industrialist who shits on everybody around him (while complaining that you can’t buy good labor enforcers anymore) as he plumps in his overstuffed chair in his guilded age monstrosity mansion.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Jay B.: I am not supporting anything except the entertainment value of Cole tweaking you dudes into a full lather with a handful of words.
celticdragonchick
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Flippancy and snark are such valuable debating tools. Nice to see you are amused by simple things.
slag
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: It’s not about perfume. It’s about persuasion. As we’ve seen over and over again, liberal policies are dead-ended if they don’t come with a good, repetitive argument. Without a forceful argument for liberalism, a Bill Clinton is just as easily followed by a GW Bush. And that’s not a long-term win; that’s a long-term loss.
Call it propaganda or brainwashing or whatever. I want a vindication with my policy.
celticdragonchick
Before anybody else mentions it…I am indeed being flippant and snarky to general Stuck. He must be amused, after all.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@celticdragonchick: Who says I was debating anything. It’s snark hour at this oasis.
NobodySpecial
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: I know, you got nothing, so you snark. But at least it’s good to know which side you’re on.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@slag:
Sorry, I’m in amused snark mode and you got caught in the cross fire. I agree with what you say:)
celticdragonchick
@slag:
That makes you a shrill dfh who reads Glenzilla too much.
Didn’t you know that?
Serious people here said so.
The Grand Panjandrum
But, but, but Obama is playing golf! Oh … yeah … I get it now. Maybe it’s time to stop watching cable news, reading The Hill and Politico.
lamh32
Golf
Posted by Joe Klein
patrick
WTF?!? My comment was deleted?!?
Jared
“Can Obama ‘connect’ with the white voter and ‘joe-sixpack?’ ”
I am reminded of a scene from “The West Wing,” in which the president’s deputy C.O.S. offers to Mary Louise Parker’s gorgeous character a simplistic explanation of the White House’s reelection strategy.
“We need to reach out to ‘swing voters,’ ” he says.
“Why don’t you just say ‘white men?’ ” She answers,
So it is with “Joe Sixpack.”
lamh32
OT,
But did anybody catch the season finale of Treme last night?
For those who did, was that not some good tv right there. Melissa Leo needs an Emmy for her performance
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@NobodySpecial: Your righteousness is so precious. Please don’t ever leave us.:-)
celticdragonchick
@The Grand Panjandrum:
Utter, unreconstructed bullshit.
Nobody would have said a thing if Hayward took the weekend to spend with his son at someplace innocuous in New York or London.
Nope.
He had to go with an ostentious and socially vulgar display of class and privilege in a yacht race as his company’s fuckup is poisoning our coasts and wildlife for generations to come.
He deserves every bit of flame commentary coming his way.
Mnemosyne
@lamh32:
We missed most of the season except for the opener and last night’s closer, for some reason. Melissa Leo just keeps getting better, doesn’t she?
And Steve Zahn can play a charming asshole like no one else. You simultaneously want to hug the guy and punch him in the back of the head for being a dick.
Quicksand
@NobodySpecial:
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
So sweet. You guys should buy adjacent plots.
patrick
What’s an unattached dash?
My comment (this time without any dashes) was…
I disagree that the left is as bad regarding this kind of trivial stuff. The right has made a living out of it. Cases in point, Gore’s personality, his invention of the internet, the Love Story nonsense. That trivial crap more than likely played a major role in keeping the 2000 election within the margin of error called Florida.
As for Hayward, when I read that he’d been sailing last weekend, I immediately thought back on the announcement that he was being relieved of Gulf disaster duty and guessed that it had more to do with the fact that he had better things to do than it actually had to do with his less-than-lacklustre performance since the explosion.
“I’ve got this thing to do, mate.”
Zifnab
@Jared: I’d actually like to know whether men or women are the bigger swing vote. It seems like middle-income white women are the one demographic besides NASCAR Hillbilly and Lardass McMillionaire that Republicans have been able to keep in toe. And you can see it in the high number of Female Republican Primary winners.
Jay B.
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
You should get out more.
AnotherBruce
@Jay B.:
Co-sign.
slag
Also, for the record, I have a thing against yachts. It’s the same thing I have against Hummers. Ostentatious douchebaggery is ostentatious douchebaggery no matter who engages in it.
That said, I couldn’t care less about this douchebag’s boating trip. Douchebags are everywhere, and he’s just one of them.
Zifnab
Also worth mentioning: The Enthusiasm Gap
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/6/21/877979/-Gallup:-Enthusiasm-gap-wider-than-ever
This might not be Obama’s fault specifically, but it will certainly become his problem come next January. Just ask Bill Clinton how his life shaped up after the Republicans took Congress in ’94. Get ready for more subpoenas on the Presidential pets.
Let’s not pretend like the President’s job isn’t part cheerleader. The Democrats have received repeated media beatings. The SCOTUS continues to pave the way for our Corporate Masters to take over everything. Obama played “Buddy POTUS” all through ’09 while the Republicans played Roe Sham Bo.
NobodySpecial
@slag: There’s a reason Stuck never actually takes a position and argues it. You realize that right? You’d be better served adding him to the pie filter with BoB as trying to argue with him.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Jay B.:
I know, but it’s hard to tear myself away from your brilliant commentary. But I will try, promise.
El Cid
How can we sell so cheap? Because we’re craaaaaazy!
Everything! Must! GOOOOOO!
Midnight Marauder
This, the conclusion of Chait’s piece, is just mind-blowingly stupid:
A dodge?! They are directly referring to and summarizing his actions, rhetoric, and behavior over the past few months. No one can make the case that Hayward has “done anything wrong here”?! Um, Chait, did you not read all of the articles you cited in your own piece that made the case for Tony Hayward’s actions being tone deaf and a public relations disaster simply by noting that the event actually happened?
I mean, I don’t really see what more needs to be done to sell this as a nightmare for BP other than saying “BP CEO Tony Hayward decided to attend the J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race, shortly after being relieved of his day-to-day duties of the Gulf Oil Spill and telling citizens of the United States, ‘I would like my life back.'” Which, it should be pointed out, IS THE FUCKING TRUTH! The fact that this moment in time is a real event that happened is already enough to make it GAME OVER for BP. They are making the case that “other people will believe that Hayward has done something wrong” because–surprise Jonathan Chait!–a lot of fucking people think he has done something wrong.
Like attending a fucking yacht race. Or leading BP’s march of eschewing safety precautions and employee well-being in pursuit of increasing company profits.
This guy hasn’t been innocent since the day he took over as CEO of BP. Let’s stop pretending he doesn’t deserve to get pilloried for pretty much everything related to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Yara
I’m with John, the second I heard about it I found it idiotic. I’m sorry but the outrage is misplace, burn them for not seeking more options to stop the leak or for not foreseeing it in the first place. But complaining about him being at a yacht race is just stupid and it take away from his the real discussions we should be having about their efforts to stop and clean up the spill.
D-Chance.
No, they aren’t as batty as the right.
As for Hayward and his yacht… fuck him. While he’s sporting around with his yacht, shrimp boats are sitting at dock and their owners looking at the end of their livelihoods. So, yeah, I want his ass down there 24/7/until the damn hole is plugged and the oil sopped up and the Gulf clean.
Chad N Freude
Precisely. Ostentation, vulgar display, class, privilege, while the unprivileged Gulf Coasters, the environment, and the entire country are suffering. These are the things that create the anger. They indicate insensitivity, aloofness, and contempt. They make it appear that all of his and BP’s mea culpa and taking responsibility is so much PR designed to make people stop bothering them and let them get on with their ostentatious, vulgar, privileged lives in their private hoi polloi-free preserves.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@El Cid: Pretty soon the Iraqi’s will inherit American made showers to get electrocuted by.
Lucky them.
Jay B.
@Zifnab:
What I don’t get on any level, though admittedly I’m not a political super-genius like Jon Chait or John Cole is the downside of running against CEOs on a political level in order to influence better policy.
Short of bringing back the docks or appointing Michael Moore to act as an American Robespierre, I think pointing the collective finger at the CEOs could be a fabled “teaching moment”. They’ve fucked up the known fucking world. Everyone hates them, save for the fabled 27%.
But somehow expressing this entirely rational anger is wrong? And can’t possibly serve to shame/scare politicians to ween themselves from kneejerk support of entirely pro-corporate politics?
Oh well. At least we’ll get to be ALL get to be mad at Darryl Issa when he starts his impeachment committee.
Chad N Freude
@celticdragonchick: My previous post should have been @you. Sorry.
FlipYrWhig
@Jay B.:
Who’s “worshiping” anything, and what are you “demanding”? IMHO that’s precisely John’s point. Too many people on the left like to compete with one another in these hollow displays of anger: declaring your own righteous rage, then looking around to see if anyone might be outdoing you and adjusting your intensity accordingly, like birds in the mating arena. Unless your “demand” is targeted at somebody and can lead to something, it’s just noise purporting to be virtue. Crack a joke, shake your head, mutter some choice profanities, and call it a day.
Geeno
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: If you’re above it all, then you can’t be said to care.
FlipYrWhig
@Jay B.:
Who said it was “wrong”? It’s right and deserved, just cheap. Why spend time getting exorcised about the symbolism when the symbolism is obvious?
D-Chance.
And, btw, maybe Hayward can’t dive down a mile deep in the ocean and shove his gigantic British schlong into the hole and close it with a personal junk shot; but, he can put on a hazmat suit, grab a shovel and rake and shoulder with “the little people” and help clean up the mess he made. A little manual labor and sweat and personally getting his hands dirty day after day in his own created filth, and a little less fru-fruing around with the yachting class, please…
Chad N Freude
Wait! Maybe we’re wrong about Hayward.
Oh, wait, maybe we’re not.
FlipYrWhig
@Midnight Marauder:
I think that’s Chait’s point: it’s tone deaf and a public relations disaster; it’s not actively harmful to the real-world repair effort, it (just) looks bad because it’s the kind of thing that looks bad. That’s not the same thing as saying it _doesn’t_ look bad (or that Heyward isn’t a pen1s). Instead of saying “Heyward should be doing X” it becomes “Heyward should look like he’s doing X,” which is why it’s a meta story.
MikeBoyScout
others on the thread have said it, but i’ll pile on.
Hayward was & is a highly overpaid worthless POS.
Yacht race? F him. I agree that whatever leadership he provides is at best worthless and more likely detrimental, but he can take his ‘needs his life back’ ass down to the beach and spend 12 hours a day scooping the foul smelling deadly shit his company is responsible for dumping where he is the overpaid Chief.
These overpaid bastards tell us all the time that the reason they get paid more than 400 times more than most of us is that they add value. Fuck Hayward! If we can’t use him as a plug he can damn well help clean up the fucking mess he created.
Greenpeace should have torpedoed his yacht.
Mike Kay
hippie puncher.
Batocchio
Um, really? How about: We’re stuck in a class war waged by the plutocracy, who are steadily making things worse, and while the water in the Gulf continues to be horribly polluted, ridiculously-overpaid CEO Tony “I want my life back” Hayward has gone to watch his yacht sail pristine waters in the “J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race.” Good grief, it’s self-satire, self-parody. I’d be surprised if the Daily Show didn’t bite on this. What Hayward did wasn’t illegal, nor should it be, but damn straight it’s fodder to be mocked.
This doesn’t occur in a vacuum. More generally, CEOs are massively overpaid, corporations are underregulated, the rich are severely undertaxed, and the middle class has been screwed over by roughly 40 years of Reaganomics. Right-wing “scholars” like Amity Schlaes pretend the New Deal was a failure by not counting government jobs as jobs; Betsy McCoughey sounds the alarm on non-existent death panels; “epistemic closure” is a polite way to say that conservative bullshit pays well, and some of the shills now believe their own bullshit. Meanwhile, there’s a group in DC trying to destroy Social Security and shred any sort of safety net and basic shared prosperity.
Not all of the ruling class have to be sociopaths and assholes to screw up the world, but as it so happens, plenty of them are. As noted upthread, it’s not as if liberals (and the few reality-based conservatives left) are lacking in practical proposals to curb the worst abuses and deliver a capitalism that’s more sane and more egalitarian – not to mention more robust – because hell, it’s been done before. I agree that attacking Hayward for “optics” at the expense of concrete action is idiotic, but there’s no need for them to be mutually exclusive, and I could give a shit about that twit’s tender fee-fees. Given that Hayward and members of his class act like such such reckless assholes, just mocking them is letting them off pretty fucking lightly.
Adam Collyer
@Yara:
This should be repeated every.single.time some idiot on cable news drones on about the PR implications of something. This is what’s can ruin America and what has already ruined American politics.
Remember how many times Obama used the phrase, “We took our eyes off the ball in Afghanistan by going into Iraq?” Well, guess what? We’ve taken our eyes off the ball on EVERYTHING. We’re always so concerned with appearance. How things look. How things play. Does Obama eat arugala? Kerry goes windsurfing? Bush is a real man on that aircraft carrier!
Forget that. Deal in reality. The rest is nonsense.
slag
@Jay B.:
I would say that the clear downside is Hayward being used as a scapegoat for/distraction from our craptacular regulatory and environmental policies. I don’t like that. In the same way I didn’t like GW Bush being used as a scapegoat for our more fundamental political/social problems.
George W Bush is one symptom of a stupid country with frakked up political and value systems. As is Hayward. Demonizing them isn’t particularly helpful because it gives us some sense that when they go away, our problems will be solved.
lamh32
@Mnemosyne:
Yeah, Davis was saved for me when he brought the dude to Janette’s door to sing that Sam Cooke song.
Plus for me it got me thinking about what I was doing the day before katrina hit. I got chills. I had to fast forward through that part.
Plus a good second line in a jazz funeral will get me everytime…!
General Egali Tarian Stuck
A sane consciousness on the effect of money in our politics is what is to blame. You can single out CEO’s or congresscritters, or senate rules, but we as a country are to blame. We elect people who appoint Scalia, Roberts, and the other wingnut wrecking crew to interpret our constitution and they do.
And formally put the SCOTUS seal of approval on what was mostly true already. That money talks, literally. With full free speech rights. And then they will peel away the last vestiges of our reps feeble attempts to define the use of money in our political system, when the Supreme Court broadens it’s United decision to also include free gratis for all cash donations to politicians running for office.
While this is very bad, it may have a silver lining. That the general public will begin to see front and center what open spicket cash for campaigning will wrought on their senses. And then, in the ensuing period, the corruption and special interest advantage over the rest of us will go full metal, because the plutocrats won’t be able to help themselves, and neither will the politicians they will now fully own title to, rather than just the lien.
And hopefully, and what is our only chance to turn this monster around before it eats us entirely, is making public elections only with public money. At some point I am confident the decision will be made by enough Americans that this is what needs to be done, or else. The only question is will it be too late.
Brien Jackson
Not to derail the thread, but speaking of things Chait was/is right about, it’s truly unbelievable how poorly Greenwald understands American politics. Really, if I were Salon I wouldn’t let him write about domestic politics on my site anymore. It’s embarrassing.
gwangung
Yeah, I agree with that.
Go ahead and get mad at them. But getting mad at them shouldn’t be a catharsis. Getting them to clean it up AND pay punitive damages should be a catharsis.
Jay B.
@FlipYrWhig:
Really? This was Chait’s point that Cole co-signed and which I find stupid:
John Cole added a bunch of stupid straw arguments about what he thinks progressives think and blah, blah, blah. Instead of furthering Chait’s point, he’s addressing the normal, boring Balloon Juice hobby horse of left-right equivalency because some people are mad at Tony Hayward’s yacht.
But both are making stupid fucking arguments. “Symbolic displays of populist outrage” is called politics. Time was, Democrats were much better at that.
And, in a case like this, it speaks to a much larger truth for the Democrats — a potential political winner — If you like the way that corporations ruin our economy, our environment and our lives, then enjoy another Republican administration. If, however, you think government can and should play a role against the predatory, greedy CEO culture on behalf of the regular folk, the Democrats are your party.
Hell, maybe they’d back that up with political action. I know, I’m a purity pony dreamer!
Anger against rapacious corporations is a good thing, IMO. Anger at Bush policies gave the Democrats Congress and the White House. It can be not only useful politically, but a positive for society at large — anger at the disaster might help pass better environmental legislation and better regulations, it’s possible!
And I didn’t say Cole was “worshipping” CEOs, but I do think that our society does at large — to our detriment. They are accountability free, largely. I don’t see this as a revolutionary statement.
MikeBoyScout
And while I’m ranting…
I’ll make the case that Hayward can never relax, or that he can’t spend his own money as he sees fit when he does relax.
It’s called common decency. You fucked up the ninth largest body of water in the world. 11 men are dead.
You were paid handsomely to make sure this never happened.
You cashed all those checks, ASSHOLE.
Like the dead men under your employ when your organization skipped past known safety practices to make more money to maintain your fucking yacht, YOUR LIFE IS OVER.
Get used to it! No more caviar and boat shoes for you, you fucking twit. Suit up and start spending 14 hours a day cleaning up the mess you made, and do so either until it is all clean, or die trying. There are reasonable people willing to help you on both counts.
Midnight Marauder
@FlipYrWhig:
But here’s the thing; I don’t think that it “just looks bad.” I think that it is actually a bad, horrendous decision on Hayward’s part, and certainly Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg. Again, it’s not just the yacht race that people are objecting to here; they are objecting to the egregiously insensitive pattern of behavior Tony Hayward has displayed since this spill first occurred.
It ranges from talking about how “the overall environmental impact of this will be very, very modest,” to saying “I want my life to back,” to going in front of Congress and putting on his best Alberto Gonzales routine, to now being relieved of day-to-day responsibility for managing the Gulf of Mexico oil spill because he was fucking terrible at it. Every step of the way, this guy–and the company he oversees–have behaved like negligent, pompous assholes, and running off to attend the J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race the next fucking day after being “relieved of day-to-day responsibility for managing the Gulf of Mexico oil spill” is not a fucking smart decision. Period.
I disagree that it’s a non-story, and counter by saying it’s entirely representative of the “No, seriously. Fuck you” attitude that led BP and the residents of the Gulf to where we are today. It’s not a case of “Hayward should look like he’s doing X,” which is indeed a meta story. The issue is more like “Hayward should not be at a fucking yacht race the very next day after being relieved of his duties. Especially after telling the entire world he would like his life back, which apparently features the J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race as a top priority.”
FlipYrWhig
@Midnight Marauder:
Right, it’s “insensitive.” “Insensitive” is not the same as tangibly harmful. It’s still A Bad Thing to be insensitive, but it’s not an action. It’s not a non-story, it’s a meta story; it’s a story about looking bad rather than a story about doing bad. But both are still bad, and I don’t think Chait would deny that.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
.@Geeno:
Dude, what I don’t care about is frothing fools calling themselves progressive when they are not, and wanking endlessly like carnival barkers for somebody to do something. Completely oblivious to politics as they are and spouting platitudes of their importance. I am just trying to grow wings to stay above this particular brand of bullshit. It is endless, and meaningless, imo. And completely devoid of honest perspective. But you wank on, by all means, and keep misinterpreting what I say, and putting words in my mouth. it’s what you do.
Just like the wingnuts do.
Jay B.
@slag:
Jesus Christ. Bush was a global menace and a criminal. He should be in the Hague. Demonize him? We should be so lucky. Exposing him exposes the whole, rotten core. If we don’t address what we found so repellent about Bush — as Obama didn’t — we lose the opportunity to address the symptoms that make this country so sick.
That’s why, instead of being a country united against torture, we’ve become a country that excuses torture.
And now, instead of exposing Hayward as the perfect example of the callous, immoral face of predatory, heedless, unchecked capitalism — to inspire a change of behavior and change the argument about regulation and wake people up — Chait wants to have a rational policy discussion, as if there is a rational conversation going on between good faith brokers.
You do realize that we’ve been talking about doing something about global warming and energy independence for 30 or 40 years, right? Chait wants to continue that policy conversation.
You tell me how that’s a rational path. It’s more of the same.
FDR helped the New Deal by pointing out that the economic royalists were the ones strangling America. He was right then. He’d be right now.
slag
@Jay B.:
I agree with this assessment. But I think worshiping and demonizing are closely related and equally unhelpful responses. They both raise the object higher in one’s estimation than the object deserves. God and Satan are just two different sides of the same worthless coin.
Brien Jackson
Actually, I don’t actually think it’s all that bad that people are mad at the CEO of the company who caused this incredibly large disaster for flaunting his wealth and leisure activities. Maybe it’s not fair, but thems the breaks in this situation.
On the other hand, throwing a poutrage fit over a foreign executive messing up an idiom is nothing but exploiting a cultural/linguistic gap to stoke ignorant, populist rage. That disgusts me enough when it comes from the right, it disgusts me even more coming from the people who are supposed to be better than that.
Jay B.
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
It’s true, most projectors have gone digital.
Brien Jackson
@Jay B.:
And then cutting a bargain with racist Southern Democrats.
NobodySpecial
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: Poor Stuck is being picked on again, and all he ever wanted to do is sharpen his snark so he can get a guest appearance on Sadly, No!
LEAVE STUCKY ALONE!!!!!!
slag
@Jay B.:
First, Obama is not “we”. The American people are “we”, and we are the ones who not only enabled GW Bush but we cheered him on. Do you honestly think that if the American populace strongly disapproved of torture, Obama wouldn’t act on that disapproval? Really?
And Another Thing...
And in related news, check out this photo of the Gulf and the spill:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=44375
so screwed…
FlipYrWhig
@Jay B.: You have a good point about how it doesn’t have to be a choice between one or the other, symbolic display OR intelligent public action.
I think the larger point is that once your symbolic display clicks with people, what is the intelligent public action supposed to be? Once people are properly good and mad at Tony Heyward and “CEO culture,” _then_ what do you want them to do? And the problem with using symbolic display to catalyze political action is that it’s also taboo in American politics to do so openly: we call it “politicizing,” and it makes people upset, to the point where it can reverse their initial sympathy for the symbolic display.
(And John’s final part about the “idiocy” of the “progressive left” seems to me like a reference to the post-speech-reaction to-do over how Obama didn’t say “climate change,” which was just like last summer’s many flaps over how he didn’t say “public option,” or didn’t say it _enough_, or not at the right time. There really is a tendency to jump all over rhetoric and optics — because we all write, at least blog comments, and feel like we know what’s effective and what isn’t — and it can come at the cost of evaluating actual action.)
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@NobodySpecial: Gawd, you are sounding more like Corner Stone every day. You aren’t Cylon are you?
NobodySpecial
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: I thought you were being funny.
Plz to bring back teh funny.
Jay B.
@slag:
Yes. And even if they did, it was clearly against the law, so “popular indifference” is the excuse for not prosecuting the Bush administration for it?
If you have laws and don’t prosecute them, people, naturally don’t respect them. This is pretty much how we got to where we are.
Midnight Marauder
@FlipYrWhig:
Saying “I would like my life back” and then running off to the J.P. Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race the very next day after you were relieved of day-to-day duties is A Bad Thing.
One of BP’s major problems right now is how they are viewed by the United States, and relatedly, the world at large. They have done themselves no favors in this regard, and having their buffoon of a CEO run of and embarrass the company is this manner should be viewed as an actively detrimental action to the company’s long-term well being, if such a thing even exists.
Of course, this would be a legitimate concern if those same people running BP did not elevate Tony Hayward to the position of CEO in the first place, and then keep him in his position after he oversaw the worst environmental disaster in the history of the United States of America.
Corner Stone
@slag:
are you out of your fucking mind? Really?
General Egali Tarian Stuck
The Twilight Zone thread.
Corner Stone
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: Starting Tuesday, my Comcast will go on vacation for 3 months, and I will be walking away from the internet in total, for that period, at least. It is set. And hopefully develop a life outside of it and get some shit done that needs doing that I can’t seem to quit sitting in front of this addictive monster called the internet every spare minute of the day and night. Not just BJ, but all of it. It will be an experiment and adventure, and I am excited. Been considering doing this for months that has nothing to do with Balloon Juice. Now is the time.
~ May 14th, 2010.
numbskull
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: Actually, if you can’t see the political optics here, General, you might want to retire from the field. I agree with the various posters here that there is no downside to running against the CEOs, particularly the ones who are actually responsible for policies that harm the commonwealth and the common man. Part of winning is taking advantage of opponents’ mistakes. Ol’ Tony may not produce much that’s useful, but he sure produces a lot of mistakes. We should capitalize on those politically to move our agenda forward. I don’t know what your agenda is, but I think a good agenda to pursue to getting some control over corporations, enacting some useful oversight. You don’t get that unless you have angry, fired up people calling their Congress-critters. Having visited mine and the delegations of several other states over the years in a professional capacity, I can tell you from direct experience that without the heated phone calls and letters, you’ll never even get your foot in the door.
Jay B.
Getting beyond the hopelessness of “well, we can’t do anything”, we/you/the administration can do something. Here are some options:
* Rule 4: Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. “You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.”
* Rule 5: Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. It’s hard to counterattack ridicule, and it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage.
* Rule 8: Keep the pressure on. Use different tactics and actions and use all events of the period for your purpose. “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this that will cause the opposition to react to your advantage.”
* Rule 10: The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative. Avoid being trapped by an opponent or an interviewer who says, “Okay, what would you do?”
* Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.
Alinsky wasn’t wrong, you know. Obama knows that. All of the above work into his strengths at the moment. Be the change, as it were.
Corner Stone
@Midnight Marauder: Well struck sir.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Corner Stone: i knew I shouldn’t have mentioned your name. Like raising zombies from the dead.
I trust that you and fuckhead have completed your investigation into the BJ and my blogs archives and are ready to submit your report.
slag
@Jay B.:
No. But if you really think that prosecuting the Bush administration would lead to “a country united against torture”, then we have a disagreement. An unresolvable disagreement.
Corner Stone
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: I am officially asking that you ban me John Cole. It is my decision and does not reflect on your laudable idea of free speech and good policy of not banning people. I just don’t want to be tempted to return is all.
slag
@Corner Stone: Apparently.
FlipYrWhig
@Midnight Marauder: Are we disagreeing anymore? I’m not sure. My sense of Chait’s point is that whatever Heyward was doing with himself wasn’t going to stop the leak or clean up the oil, so it’s immaterial _except in terms of how bad it looks_, and he’d rather see the story told in terms of what’s being done than in terms of how it looks, because stories about how things look tend to become circular and self-fulfilling.
I take it that he would rather have criticism of Heyward take the form of “Heyward shouldn’t go watch yacht racing because he should be doing X instead” rather than “Heyward shouldn’t go watch yacht racing because he’ll get himself pegged as the kind of guy who watches yacht racing.” But, I hasten to add, Chait definitely isn’t saying that it’s a good idea for Heyward to watch yacht racing.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@numbskull: when I made the comment you link to, and following back the links to that, there was no optics about running against the CEO’s. It was bullshit kneejerk progressives to Cole’s baiting.
So piss off with more dishonest wanking. And telling me what field to play on. numbskull, accurate handle.
You fuckers are not a nickels worth of difference with the wingnuts in how you operate.
Jay B.
@slag:
Well, it’d force us to have that conversation now, wouldn’t it? With real stakes. At the beginning of the Bush Administration, I think, overwhelmingly, Americans would have found torture — “even” waterboarding — beyond the Pale.
If you don’t address it, how do you change it?
Corner Stone
@slag: My stunned disbelief was really that you could believe that if 80% of the polled results showed citizens wanted Bush era actions strongly investigated that Obama would *actually* do it.
The polling is irrelevant. Obama was never, and would never, do that.
MikeBoyScout
revolutionary justice openly proclaims itself a fighting organ of the working class in its struggle against bourgeois enemies
It is especially important that the tribunal should introduce into its sentences the idea that the punishment for one and the same offense will be heavier the higher the post, and therefore the responsibility, of the guilty person.
A sentence must possess an agitational character: it must deter some while enhancing confidence and courage in the hearts of others.
Just saying.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Corner Stone: LOL, nobody cares about that except those who I could care less about.
Corner Stone
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: What I find interesting is that 90% of the people who comment on your return mention pics of Charlie.
Kind of clear, isn’t it?
ETA – and by “return” I mean your 4 day hiatus after a 5 day pathetic drama queening all across this blog.
Somehow 3 months just isn’t what it used to be. I guess it’s a result of that damned inflation El Cid is always talking about.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Corner Stone:
Keep shoveling it CS, you will find that pony of my blog destruction some day. Till then, watch out for that bottle worm.
Mnemosyne
@Chad N Freude:
Isn’t an oil conference the kind of thing the guy should be going to? I’m assuming this is an actual conference with papers and suchlike, not just a hookers-n-blow excuse to leave your wife at home.
If he’s skipping something he should be doing that’s related to his job so he can dodge the bad publicity, I think that means that the bad PR from the yacht race backfired, frankly.
FlipYrWhig
@Jay B.: Good ideas. I’m just not sure about how to pivot from “Hey, look, callous rich jackass is being a callous rich jackass!” to “Unbridled capitalism has many flaws, some of which we can ameliorate by passing the Doe-Schmoe Act.” I think it’s particularly tricky because of the “politicization” taboo, which has been on my mind a lot lately.
Mike Kay
[crunch, crunch, crunch]
eating popcorn
[/crunch, crunch, crunch]
Jay B.
@FlipYrWhig:
You’re right that making Hayward the face of everything that’s gone wrong in the Gulf is the easy part. But the pivot isn’t that hard.
“We can’t afford to have Haywards — or autocratic regimes — making life and death decisions over our future anymore. They may own the oil, but obviously they don’t own the future…”
I just question the commitment, honestly. No one is playing for the long term. I mean if an entire political party basically disagrees with the notion that there’s any kind of energy or environmental problem to begin with and the other political party is terrible at making it a fight worth fighting (and half of whom don’t want to fight to begin with), we’re fucked.
The oil spill is only the latest utter disaster. And the rest of them — Valdez, fluctuating oil spikes in prices, our Middle East policies, oil dependence on the worst countries in the world — didn’t convince anyone who wasn’t already convinced.
That said, if this isn’t a moment to raise the possibility of a radical change in energy policy, there never will be one. Because we won’t be a nation long enough to see it.
slag
@Jay B.:
I agree that it should be addressed. In the form of elucidation of liberal policies by our representatives. Obama has done this from time to time but he needs to do it more and he needs allies. And, let’s be honest, it’s not a priority at the moment.
Especially with the current state of affairs. When the House leader emphatically states she was lied to on this topic multiple times and the CIA says otherwise. And when the major media would be so enrapt by this he-said, she-said helter skelter bullshit. Prosecution would be an absolute rabbit hole with no sense of reality in sight. And could only be accomplished through the collective will of the people. A lot more people than currently will it.
Does that make the DOJ’s avoidance of the issue right? Absolutely not. But let’s not pretend that public opinion starts with prosecution. More like the other way around.
Corner Stone
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: You’re like a half pint brawler in a world of six footers.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Mike Kay: Pass that P-corn, it’s Firedoglake night around these parts.
slag
@Corner Stone: Yes. Because if there’s one thing Obama cares about more than popularity and public opinion, it’s preventing the Bush Administration from being held accountable for its actions. I don’t know what I was thinking.
Jay B.
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
You might consider that other than you two idiots, most every one else is having a conversation.
Steeplejack
@Violet:
You don’t have to give up dashes and hyphens. What WordPress seems to misinterpret is a single hyphen before a word–i.e., [space] [hyphen] [word]. It takes it as code to strike through the following text. And when it happens at the end of a comment–as in someone using it in a (superfluous) sign-off line–it seems to farkle the thread or sometimes kill it.
But this thread looks okay now, so I don’t know if that is what happened.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Jay B.: Yea right, a conversation born out of misinterpreting the blog thread post and Cole’s remark about progressives being like wingnuts, into uncovering the obvious that dems should run against CEO’s, to the finale that Obama really wants to protect the Bushies, and would do so even if the public were to clamor for their prosecution. Amongst other tidbits of brilliance from wizards such as yourself. My comments do not stop you from this, and I encourage it, for, like i said, it’s intrinsic entertainment value.
Jay B.
@slag:
Never was and never will be. But that’s a huge part of the sickness you describe. It’s a circular logic — there will never be a good time, thus, really, laws are only to be followed when convenient, thus, there’s never a good time to follow the law* (*if you are rich and/or powerful). Beats me why “the country” is so sick.
Yeah, I’ll be waiting another 40 years for that. It’d be nice after conservative policies ruin the known world, we might be reminded why we are liberals and how those beliefs might actually be beneficial to the country.
Allienne Goddard
Does anyone besides me remember General Idiot Dumbass whining like a spanked child a month or so ago over something Cole said? It was truly pathetic; he said he was going to leave and go find a life because teh intertubes were taking up too much of his time and energy, said his goodbyes to all his friends, and then came crawling back to make his apologies… all in the same thread! Ah, good times, good times. Well, I’m sure he remembers.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Allienne Goddard: Life is strange, ain’t it :)
Corner Stone
@slag: I’m not sure anymore. Are you saying Obama really wants to hold any potential Bush Era discrepancies accountable, but he knows there’s only a slight majority for it?
What do you think “looking forward” means?
Corner Stone
@Jay B.:
Sheesh. When the world craters, and roving biker gangs are killing and raping everyone across the US as order has broken down, I can clearly see the people left alive blaming “liberals” for how it all turned out.
Jay B.
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Other than dogs, what the fuck do you want to talk about on a blog?
Cole made the same stupid point he tries to make every time it gets a little dull around here, but he centered it nonsensically around an even dumber point made by Jon Chait:
Accepting that being angry at CEOs doesn’t make the oil spill go away — something that literal idiots like you keep assuming is what we think will happen if we just complain loudly enough — the Democrats aren’t being angry enough at CEO. Some of us see it as a possible way of making a positive fight for a markedly different energy policy.
As far as Obama “really” wanting to protect Bush, it hardly matters. He is protecting Bush. Or he’s not and Bush is completely innocent. I lean toward the former, but who cares.
It’s a blog. I’m reading other adults’ take on the situation. Some of them I disagree with, some I don’t. Mostly, we’ve engaged.
To me and the others who have responded, it seems to be the point of the comment section. You and Mike Kay, conversely, are just dicks with nothing, at all, interesting or even thought-provoking to say. People like your dog though!
Zuzu's Petals
I dunno, it’s hard to believe anything can match this degree of idiocy:
The President and I Differ on the Meaning of the Word “Rest,” and Other Words
Southern Beale
Well, some of us care both WHAT policies are enacted as well as HOW because we understand that with the stupidity of our public discourse these days, the how is a crucial component to the what.
Jenny
@Corner Stone: Would any of the major democratic candidates prosecuted bush and cheney?
After all, it was Nancy Pelosi, herself, who took impeachment off the table. And when he was DNC chair, Howard Dean never called for prosecutions or impeachment.
This is deeper than any one person. Then again, maybe no one thinks you can obtain a conviction for waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Jenny
@Corner Stone: Would any of the other major democratic candidates prosecuted bush and cheney?
After all, it was Nancy Pelosi, herself, who took impeachment off the table. And when he was DNC chair, Howard Dean never called for prosecutions or impeachment. Even today, I have never heard Dean address the subject. Certainly San Francisco liberal Pelosi hasn’t.
And where are the other liberal firebrands? Why hasn’t Feingold, Grayson, Franken, Krugman, Maddow, and Sanders called for prosecutions? I’m not even sure if Kucinich has called for prosecutions, though he did call for impeachments when he was raising money.
This is deeper than any one person. Then again, maybe no one thinks you can obtain a conviction for waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Jay B.:
You see, this is the dishonest shit that won’t allow me to take you seriously, and I suspect what Cole was talking about. I said, and have said no such thing. And on a political level it is good for dems to bludgeon CEO’s with. But as you said, and so did I , the problem is deeper than just ragging on CEO’s..
And this is typical, all or nothing, black or white thinking, devoid of considering our body politic in totality. We are a democracy, and taking the step of a current administration trying to put the former in prison, without the backing of the public is a non starter. Plus many other considerations, like finite pol oxygen to do other stuff. The AG is quietly investigating the Bush admin. as we speak, so we just don’t know what will happen.
It is a testament to your sewer trout existence to use my dog as a prop to attack me. And is why you motherfucking pissants can all DIAF. Fuck you. You have nothing of value to offer here.
Corner Stone
God damn Cole.
Have you ever set up a frame where the left end didn’t involve some ridiculous hyperbole?
People who criticize Heyward are equal to rightwingers.
People who want some different response from Obama expect his schlong to plug things.
People who don’t like other decisions expect a pony.
Etc.
It’s a nice try and all.
Corner Stone
@Jenny: I’m not entirely sure of your point but I think you make a good listing of redress here.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Corner Stone: Shut up you stupid dipshit and go crawl back in your sewer with Jay B and the rest of the puma shitass trolls. That is my debate with you.
Corner Stone
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: What? No GBCW to accompany your soliloquy?
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Corner Stone: Shut up you lowlife fat lying piece of shit. I am going to stay here till the end of time and make your blogging experience a living nightmare. Every comment you make, I will be there to bend you over. It’s war with fucks like you and Jay B.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
you fuckers are ten times worse than the worst republican, so quit calling yourselves democrats or liberals. You are lying sewer trout, that is all.
Corner Stone
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: You quit the Democratic Party, and then you quit BJ.
You lack mettle. Your inner core is weak and pathetic, and you repeatedly display it.
You don’t get to tell anyone else what their political existence is like. You’re a self-described political neophyte as of 2000, yet you’re in your 50’s.
Why don’t you just go back to your wacky misspellings of common words and your overly long expiating for all the young men you wronged as you traveled the country’s varied bus stops.
Sly
Years ago, there were tons of stories about Gary Winnick’s $90mil Bel Air mansion and Dennis Kozlowski’s Stoli-pissing ice statue.
I sure love how the era of the overpaid and overhyped CEO ended after those were published.
RD
Personally, I’m with Chait, also. To a certain point.
I realize going to yacht races is what rich people when they need to get away. I don’t begrudge them that and don’t resent them for it.
But if anyone who is not a member of the too-super-rich-to-be-punished-for-fucking-up-on-such-a-grand-ecologically-and-economically-catastrophic-level performed their job the way Hayward has, not only would they be promptly unemployed, they’d probably be unemployable in the field within which they greatly fucked-up. Though it doesn’t seem to work that way for the ultra-rich and investor class. So if the working class proles want to let a little aggression out “fuck you’ing” Tony Hayward, so be it. Fortunately, for his sake, we’re too fat, lazy and powerless to do any real harm to the motherfucker, honestly.
How many livelihoods has his company destroyed?
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Corner Stone:
Watch me.
Allison W.
Exactly Mr. Cole! Exactly!
“Nothing to report folks. Just look at the shiny boat or in Obama’s case, the shiny golf clubs. We’ll keep distracting you with superficial blabber ’cause we have no idea what’s going on and well it’s just boring.”
“journalism’s haaaard.”
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Ahem. I’ve been making a similar point here in the BJ comment section for a couple of days now. Count me as one of those who does not need to see contrived shows of concern from either Obama or Hayward simply because journalists are too horsefucking stupid to respond to anything else.
To the extent that I want to see images of Tony Hayward I want to see him as he is. I don’t want to bullshit pictures of him with his shirtsleeves rolled up and sticking his finger in a tarball. Yachting with his class cohorts is what he does, so let’s see him that way. Empty gestures are for mainstream journalists, not me. In fact, the submorons in the journalist profession have done the seemingly impossible; they’ve made me more sympathetic to Tony Hayward than to them.
Jenny
@Corner Stone: From my reading, some people have personalized the non prosecution of bush and cheney. Obama this, and obama that. But my point is the non prosecution is greater than any one person, it’s systemic, from the top to the bottom. No one outside of the blogosphere has called for their prosecution, not even the most reliable and dependable liberal firebrands. Dean, Clark, Feingold, Grayson, Conyers, Leahy, Al Franken have all been silent on the subject. Even Kucinich has been silent on prosecutions.
We can knock Obama all we want, but that’s myopic. The problem is much bigger. No matter who we would have nominated, no way Hillary, Edwards, Richardson, Dodd, Biden frog march Bush.
But then again, I think we may be too hard on the Dems. I think it would be impossible to convict anyone who waterboarded someone as hated as KSM.
Corner Stone
@Jenny:
I think I understand your point now, thanks. But I would argue that it’s largely irrelevant. It would not matter in the slightest, IMO, if all those people were clamoring for The Hague II: The Sequel.
Obama just never had any intention of same. And in fact, some could make the argument that his admin willfully structured the national conversation away from that result.
Alien-Radio
Yes there’s a class war everyhting that’s been said about Hayward is true. But it’s all Second Order stuff. John’s right to call it out as bullshit narrative building. Focusing on the CEOs is an artifact of having your thinking coopted by an authoritarian culture, If you’re raging at the CEO, at the board members, they’re a convenient target, they’ll be replaced things will continue.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Corner Stone:
you have no proof of that, it is the same shit when you first came here with drunken slobbering blather about how Obama couldn’t get elected and cheated Hillary. Nothing has changed you are a lying sack of shit and dead ender hillbot troll that is just about psycho enough to think, if you come here long enough and wank the Obama fail and scribble out pure bullshit like the above, like you have been for 2 years, that suddenly he won’t be president and maybe Hillary can run and win in 2012/ That has been your trolling goal on this blog from day one. You are a lie, your existence here is a lie.
Chad N Freude
@Mnemosyne: If he were smart (a dubious premise), he would have sponsored a NASCAR racer and gone to a NASCAR race. He’d be an American hero.
Corner Stone
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: Shorter Stuck:
I’m…I’m…I’m just way too delicate for this world. Carry on, my friends, carry on. I will surely see you on the other side.
You delicate little flower you.
Jenny
Would anyone else have done different? Did any of the other candidates intend to do different?
If no then the problem is bigger than one person. Nothing is stopping Conyers and Leahy from holding hearings. Nothing is stopping Grayson and Feingold from beginning a conversation.
That’s why I won’t give everyone, and I mean everyone, a pass, most notably, Nancysmash.
I guess it’s easier to single out Obama, instead of the entire system.
Lex
Our discourse is like this because our media coverage is like this, and Chait is not guiltless in this regard.
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
Why don’t you give it a rest? You are becoming way more tedious than Stuck ever was.
Chad N Freude
@Mnemosyne: Having gotten my snark on the record @Chad N Freude, I don’t think his attendance at the conference would be a positive for the conference, for BP, or for the oil industry in general. He has become a powerful negative symbol and hence the Kiss of Death to anything he touches. Much of the discussion above doesn’t appear to acknowledge the power of symbolism in political debate. It counts. A lot.
Bob Loblaw
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Three hours earlier…
You’re a fucking loser and a hypocrite, and your continued presence hurts this site’s reputation.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Bob Loblaw:
Don’t know what those two quotes have to do with hurting this sites reputation. And BTW, what is this reputation you speak of. Enlighten us.
Steeplejack
@Allienne Goddard, @Bob Loblaw:
Golly, what’s all the sudden concern from people never heard from before? Do you have any views about anything the blog is actually about, or are you just anti-Stuck sock puppets?
Bob Loblaw
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: Every site has its trolls.
538 has Pete Kent, Yglesias’ place has Bob Roddis, and Balloon Juice has you and Mike Kay and Corner Stone. You all post the same rehashed, small-minded bullshit in thread after thread after thread. And then, of course, in true troll fashion, you fly into histrionics when you get trashed and your “internet tough guy” facade falls to shit. You revel in “rattling cages” and then you cry about being compared unfavorably to your fucking dog. Well done.
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack: Meh.
some other guy
This is some Serious analysis, John. Are you angling for a job at the WaPo or something?
Corner Stone
@Bob Loblaw: Oh man. You put me with those two? Jeebus.
Chupy
To me, this is the biggest problem with the modern corporate state — no matter what happens, this guy will land on his feet. He’ll never lose his house, go hungry, or wonder how he’ll pay his bills because he and his cronies have made certain that no matter how badly he (and they) perform they’ll hire expert public relations folks to help them ride out the storm, and if that doesn’t work, they’ll still have a golden parachute to take care of them. Since there is no true punishment for bad or reckless behavior, they will continue to make bad, reckless decisions.
His company, under his “leadership”, criminally fucked up (and not for the first time) — in any sort of fair world, he’d follow the model of Japanese corporate heads and at least resign in disgrace.
It’s only because I’m a non-violent type of guy that I don’t call for seppuku …
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Bob Loblaw: And who the fuck are you? some drive be jackass that doesn’t like what I say on this blog. I make comments about everyday, so why haven’t you piped up and challenged what I say then. Instead you wait for the chance of a pile on. We get cowards like you, and I seem to get more than my share. Crawling out of the woodwork from lurking and stewing in their own juices, but not able to jump in when it counts, only to later, when a flame war erupts. Spare me tough guy.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Bob Loblaw:
some sick motherfuckers drop by here. jeebus. maybe I shouldn’t have come back. This is my achilles heal, I cannot take much more of smearing my dog. You dudes have found the right button, albeit stooping as low as possible to find it.
Gretchen D
@New Yorker: Sometimes I would put words like that in his mouth, too.
gmknobl
Gotta partly disagree with you here, original poster.
1) I don’t like it when politicians look out for the little guy either because many don’t and it’s rather demeaning.
2) In Britain, there is – er, or use to be – more of a class divide and many people over here know it. So when an upper class British conservative with a sense of entitlement says he’ll help the small people, it not only shows an ignorance of local American speech patterns, it takes on a greater class-divide symbolism that is demeaning.
3) Yes, during a crisis this big you do need to work 7 days a week though you weren’t arguing that.
4) Lot’s of people have noticed the outrage machine that is the American Mass Media (TM) these days. It cranks out outrage, which is addictive, to feed the ratings. This was just tailor made fodder from someone who should have known better. He’s not a P.R. person which is why he’s off that particular job now replaced by an American version of him that knows how to talk ‘Merican and hide his American conservative upper class sense of entitlement.
FlipYrWhig
@gmknobl:
Um, the guy who said the ill-starred phrase “small people” wasn’t an upper class British conservative. It wasn’t Tony Heyward, it was Carl-Henric Svanberg, a Swedish dude… whose politics I know nothing about.
Joseph Nobles
God, I leave here for a couple of hours and the place looks like Stanley McChrystal’s place after he and his aides got their Obama hate on.
lumpenprole
When I think of all the BP green-washing crap that I’ve endured over the years, I can’t get enough of this.
r€nato
@Adam Collyer:
well I’m coming awfully late to this thread, but:
This. I’m sure Tony Hayward spends several hours sleeping each night, not thinking about the spill. I’m not outraged about that; nor am I outraged that he might be having tea and crumpets at someone’s palatial English estate after working hours. But the optics of this are just horrible, as evidenced by how he’s being pilloried about it. He’s entitled to his time off, but it just looks bad… like how Bush was off celebrating McCain’s birthday and playing with a guitar while New Orleans flooded.
Has he been a bad, inept CEO? I don’t honestly know. As an evidence-based, reality-based person I am not sure any of us have enough data to truly judge him fairly on that count. I know I don’t. It’s a very difficult problem, to seal off this well. I have some measure of sympathy for him and for BP, because they were likely to be pilloried no matter what they did short of magically capping the well within a week.
Has he said some dumb things? YES. Has BP been inept in sealing off the well? Only if they haven’t pulled out all the stops. This is not the time to bean-count. Was BP inept by cutting corners in the first place? YES. I am sure they are ruing their decision to save a half-million here and there by not installing adequate measures in the event of this sort of extremely low probability, extremely high consequence eventuality.
Will we learn anything from this and do things differently in the future? I highly doubt it, not so long as Fox News Channel, Rush Limbaugh and the rest of their poisonous ilk and their flock of teabagging assholes have influence in our political system. There is a lesson to be had here about doing something about global climate change while we still can; I would bet any amount of money nobody will take heed. Profits will come first and then when it’s time to pay the piper whether we like it or not, the usual finger-pointing and blaming anybody but themselves will happen, followed by the right-wing bullshit machine crowing about the economic opportunities afforded by flooded coastal areas and displacements caused by permanent climate shifts.
scott
When your company cut corners, blew up an oil rig, killed 11 people, and looks like it’s going to destroy the Gulf of Mexico and the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people, it looks bad if you go to a fracking YACHTING RACE. When lots of otherwise intelligent people don’t seem to get that, I realize (not for the first time) that we actually are astonishingly deferential to the interests of very rich people who dump on the rest of us and are never held accountable in any meaningful way. This guy won’t get prosecuted and will walk away from this with hundreds of millions of dollars that he can swim in, Scrooge McDuck style, for the rest of his life. Is it really too much to ask that he not rub our noses in that for a decent interval until the mext time some company screws us and gets away with it? Poor Mr. Heyward! Boo hoo………
russell
Works for me.
I bet he’d do it for a great big bonus. He can do it to clean up the mess. It’s a big fucking mess, after all.
Why is that controversial?