I don’t feel like putting on my diplomatic hat for this one. Unfiltered language ahoy.
It’s come to my attention that British pols are upset that our president is saying nasty things about BP. In case you weren’t aware, BP stands for British Petroleum, and it’s one of the country’s biggest companies. Apparently a lot of retirement money and other nest eggs rest in BP stock. And if Obama keeps being SO MEEN about the oil giant it will ruin the company and a bunch of people will lose money.
While I wouldn’t want to bankrupt old people, especially in a financial climate such as this, the bottom line for me is: I don’t fucking care.
BP Broke The Ocean. Broke it. Dead Mayans are pointing fingers at us from the afterlife and saying “we told you so, assholes.”
The company deserves to go down in flames, especially since that’s a likely scenario for the ocean. The executives deserve to drown choking on oil and gas since that’s what’s happening right now to marine life. And politicians who find that kind of rhetoric distasteful can suck it.
It is no way xenophobic to rail against BP, mayor of London, so you can just put a button on your lip right now. This is not an anti-British crusade. I don’t think anyone particularly cares that the company responsible for the destruction of the Gulf has its headquarters in your country. (Though I find this What If It Was Citgo scenario pretty plausible.) Just because you’re friendly with Israel you are not allowed to borrow their rhetoric for your goddamn foolishness1.
If so many people are worried that their retirement funds are in danger of depletion as BP’s stock goes down the toilet, may I suggest something? SELL. This has been going on for almost two months, now. You’ve had plenty of warning. You should have sold that stock weeks ago.
And can I also point out that nothing is guaranteed with stock. Just ask ex-Enron employees. Diversify or hush up. And if someone besides you is making the decision to keep BP stock, then it’s their fault if your money goes away, not our president.
Of all the stupid shit I have heard come out of people’s mouths about this oil spill — including how “irresponsible” it was for the media to characterize this as potentially bigger than the Exxon Valdez disaster2 (and, oh look, IT IS) -– this is perhaps the stupidest. Putting financial considerations above protecting not just the Earth but people’s lives is what got us into this, remember? So why don’t you British pols just all sit down and shut up. You are not helping.
Jesus people, this is what happens when you let the Tories back in power.
Dear British Politicians: Shut The Hell Up -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman
Footnotes
- I’m referring to the practice of labeling any criticism of Israel as antisemitism, which not everyone does, but the comments from London’s Mayor totally reminded me of the meme.
- I heard this weeks ago during On The Media and at the time thought that it was irresponsible to not characterize it thusly. And now I’ve been proven right. I feel good about that. No, really.
Yeah, I thought that was fairly absurd myself. When you get right down to it I hardly figure that anything the President says is going to make any difference in BP’s stock price anyway. There’s a whole bunch of failure that’s going to be the downfall of BP right now. I don’t know if it will bankrupt them, but they made bad choices and now they’ll have to pay for them.
And you can interpret “they” as either “BP” or “British pension fund managers” as you choose.
However, it’s also absurd to blame this on the Tories. The decisions that led to this situation were made long before they got into power.
I’m just waiting for BP to declare bankruptcy, so that we can have a huge federal bailout of them justified on the grounds that without federal assistance they’ll go out of business and leave the taxpayer liable for the costs of the cleanup.
[Pointless, cliched lefty-baiting by Robert deleted by Amp.]
As far as criticizing President Obama goes, he doesn’t deserve to be condemned for what he’s said nearly as much as he deserves it for what he’s done. Or, more accurately, for what he’s failed to do.
Oh, look, reflexive British anti-Americanism. Again. How astonishing.
Imagine if it were Languedoc Petroleum’s platform and all the oil was heading straight up the Thames. Think the mayor of London would be cautioning his countrymen not to pick on LP and to avoid “xenophobia” and reminding them that lots of people have money invested in LP? Yeah, me neither.
The Brits are just worried that we’re going to crush them tomorrow.
Nah, they’re always like this. I’m sure I’ve told the story about traveling to England with my first husband (a Canadian) and the very interesting reactions we got from people who assume that I was also Canadian.
You know when you Yanks were responsible for the Piper Alpha disaster which killed 167 men on a North Sea rig the UK didn’t whine like babies. This leak is in deep, warm water and by Christmas you’ll have forgotten all about it. We won’t ….. your President has lost your country an ally.
Oh and what about the guys who actually caused the spill Transocean, Halliburton and the Yank regulators ….. how come no-one’s gunning for them?
Has BP actually been found guilty of anything other than searching for oil for you gas-guzzlers? Oh and then cleaning up the mess caused by American comapnies
Robert, BP isn’t yet bankrupt but U.S. taxpayers will likely still foot the bill:
Corporate welfare
Britski, pretending for the moment you’re an actual Brit and not a troll, if you think Transocean etc. are getting out of lawsuit hell, you’re not in the same reality-parallel as the one where the spill is actually happening.
Yeah but, Boris Johnson is like a UK Jesse Ventura, he’s not really representative of British pols or even Tories. David Cameron has distanced himself from those comments (actually, distancing oneself from Boris Johnson appears to be a national pastime for UK pols, if Question Time is any measure) and Nick Clegg has been emphasizing that the focus should be on the environmental disaster.
@ Ron,
Actually, the regulatory lapses/evasions are a longstanding part of American policy. Oil and mining companies pretty much have free trod over the environment and workers’ rights. Obama–more accurately, the current administration–doesn’t even come *close* to being first in line to blame on this. We can start with MMS (motto: “safety is highly encouraged”).
Firstly, generalising from Boris Johnson to “British pols” is like generalising from Michele Bachmann to “American pols”. He’s a weirdo.
Secondly, the company has not been called “British Petroleum” since 1998 – it’s just BP. Calling it “British Petroleum” is an attempt to demonise it by association with foreigners, like calling the President “Barack Hussein Obama”. I hate the company as much as anyone, but xenophobia in service of a good cause is still xenophobia.
Actually he probably calls it British Petroleum, not out of xenophobia, but from a specific distaste for the United Kingdom. No, he’s not a Kenyan, but his dad was and it’s not unreasonable that he’d identify more with the colonized nation than with the colonizer. I won’t get into the rights and wrongs of the matter, but let’s just say that the UK doesn’t have a good image with most Kenyans.
Recall, too, that Obama has been hostile to/snubbing towards the UK pretty much from day one. Removing the Churchill bust, sending insulting gifts to the Queen and the PM…it hasn’t been subtle.
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Actually, he probably calls it British Petroleum because that’s what it was called during the childhood & early adulthood of our generation. It’s only in the last few years that they’ve had their commercials touting themselves as “Beyond Petroleum.”
I, for example, only found out today that it isn’t called British Petroleum anymore.
Sean H., I just figured they adopted a new logo. I had no idea they’d formally shortened their name to an acronym. I spent 40+ years calling it “British Petroleum”, and that’s what I’ve been calling it now. Take it from someone who’s no fan of the President – I doubt he’s calling BP “British Petroleum” because he’s anti-British. It’s still a name used in common conversation in the United States. Kind of gives you confidence in marketing, doesn’t it?
Speaking of marketing; the American baseball season is about 1/3 over. There’s two leagues in it. This weekend kicked off a short period of inter-league play, which is a relatively new thing in the sport’s history (normally they would only play each other in the World Series). In the Chicago area, where I live, there is a team from each league that plays in the city – quite unusual, only one other city in the U.S. has two teams – and there is a strong rivalry such that you are a fan of either one or the other team and profess distaste for the other team. So, to promote the rivalry, during interleague play the two teams are always scheduled to play each other. A large corporation decided to market itself starting this year by initiating a trophy, a rather large and ornate one, to be presented to the winner of the series.
Guess who the large corporation is?
Guess who got the absolute $h!t booed out of them when they showed up at the first game of the series to present the trophy to the standing-room-only crowd? Which occasion, BTW, was covered by all the major print and broadcast media. Calls are being made to have the teams refuse the trophy ….
Willow, you’re quite right that regulation of industies by officials or ex-officials or people who are influenced by those industries has been a long-standing problem in the U.S. Long-standing enough that President Obama has been well aware of it in. Cleaning up this kind of thing is what he ran for President on, but he’s done nothing. BP gave him more campaign contributions ($72K) than any other Presidential candidate, and – in true Chicago political fashion – employs the consulting and marketing services of some of his friends.
But besides the fact that Obama has done nothing to break up business as usual – again, something that his whole campaign was predicated on – it’s also noteworthy that he’s not done everything he can to give people the freedom to dredge channels and pile up buffers and barriers to keep the oil off of beaches. Federal environmental regulations are standing in the way, regulations that Obama could sweep away with the stroke of a pen. This is beyond “go help people”, it’s standing in the way of people helping themselves, the essence of America.
“Actually he probably calls it British Petroleum, not out of xenophobia, but from a specific distaste for the United Kingdom. No, he’s not a Kenyan, but his dad was and it’s not unreasonable that he’d identify more with the colonized nation than with the colonizer. I won’t get into the rights and wrongs of the matter, but let’s just say that the UK doesn’t have a good image with most Kenyans.”
President Obama was was not close to his father. All his father meant to him was his lack of one. He is not close to his father’s family. He was raised Irish-American grandparents in Hawaii. To say he is angry at Britain based family-based national grudge, is a stretch to say the least.
I can only guess that you don’t know too many Irish people, or the history between England and Ireland.
Ron, do you have any actual evidence for your “Obama is mad at the British because of a family-based national grudge” theory? Is this just something you made up, or is there more to it?
—Myca
Hidden significance in saying “British Petroleum”: really? Come on, they chose the name “BP” to make themselves sound environmentally friendly. It was always a laughably obvious corporate lie. Even advertisers could see it, years before the current disaster:
He was, of course, but then he got paid to Believe in farsighted corporations.
Irish-American who live in Hawaii, as someone who has quite a few Irish-American relatives, I can tell you that none of them sit around talking about the damn British all the time.
Jeremy, the premise initially offered by Robert was that President Obama might be put off by the British due to his Kenyan ancestry and the history of British colonial rule in Kenya. You offered that he didn’t have that much connection to his Kenyan heritage and was in fact most closely influenced by Irish relatives. My point is that the concept that he was raised by Irish relatives instead of Kenyan ones hardly removes the possibility that he might have gotten some anti-British feelings from his relatives.
But then it certainly doesn’t establish it either, and I never said it did. Myca, whatever are you talking about?
Robert @13: uh what? Is this off some recent Conservative Talking Points thing? “Obama’s estranged father was Kenyan; riff off Kenya/UK tensions to argue Obama hates BP purely because it’s British.”
Other way around I think; Obama is hostile to the UK (as shown by behavior), and people started looking for explanations, since he hasn’t had any involvement with them prior to becoming President.
Robert, that “insulting gifts to the Queen” bit is a right-wing talking point as far as I know. The Ipod and the Richard Rodgers songbook was her own request. And what did she give them in return? Why, a signed, silver-framed photograph of Herself and her consort. Sweet.
Betty II seems to have been displeased with Dubya’s visit to the palace, his helicopters messing up her lawn and all. And Philip’s boorishness is legendary, which probably means he got along swimmingly with Dubya.
I can only guess that you don’t know too many Irish people, or the history between England and Ireland.
I’ve got an Irish surname (though a mixed background) and live in a region with a lot of Irish Americans. I’m well aware of the history of English colonialsim in Ireland, however, that doesn’t mean I have a shred of animosity for the British (especially since, you know, the US–and many Irish Americans–have engaged in many of the same actions and behaviors). I lived in England and had a lot of good friends there; people there were wonderful (and the TV shows were miles better than the drek we had Stateside). I can assure you that the vast majority of us have no problem with the UK at all–many of us also tend to identify as American, not Irish, the claddah rings and knowledge of Irish cursewords notwithstanding.
Maybe its because he is living the house that British burnt to the ground back during War of 1812? He is spiteful and has not got over it yet! I think his problem is BP ruined the ocean, and has been lying and trying to take as least amount of responsibility as possible. Nah! That ain’t it! When you look at him giving the Queen cheep gifts, the combination must be he hates the British! His Kenyan Dad probably hated the British, his Irish grandparents hated them too, and they burnt down his house almost two hundred years ago! You know, he gave many speeches, including his inaugural, where he talked about how proud he was that the American Revolutionaries over threw the Empire! President Obama must be looking to finish the job.
Seriously? That’s a right-wing talking point?
[clutches head]
So, Obama was too deferential to the Japanese Prime Minister because of how he bowed, but not deferential enough to the British Monarchy because of his choice of gifts? I swear, it’s like the Right isn’t even interested in having sensible discussions any more.
Sheezlebub
A very healthy attitude to take. Lots of Irish-Americans don’t share it. Unfortunately. So to make the presumption that since the President might well identify with his Irish-American relatives rather than his Kenyan ones he’s therefore less likely to have antipathy towards the British based on his ancestry is rather unwarranted.
Which, again, doesn’t mean that he actually has any such antipathy. I rather doubt it, myself. As I said, he’s probably using the name “British Petroleum” rather than “BP” because BP’s marketing has been less effective than they’d like it to have been, not because he’s pissed at the British.
Obama said ‘British Petroleum’, in my view, because he regarded this to be the company’s ‘blame-name’, in rather the same way one might say: ‘One man, and one man alone, was responsible for her death – John Reginald Halliday Christie!’ (Rather than: ‘Christie done it!’)