From the AP :
BP’s massive oil spill became the largest ever in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday based on the highest of the federal government’s estimates, an ominous record that underscores the oil giant’s dire need to halt the gusher.
The oil that’s spewed for two and a half months from a blown-out well a mile under the sea hit the 140.6 million gallon mark, eclipsing the record-setting, 140-million-gallon Ixtoc I spill off Mexico’s coast from 1979 to 1980.
That’s just the oil. Forget about the toxic dispersants. And the oil will continue to flow. Maybe the relief well in August will stop the flow. Maybe.
About a month ago, I argued that the focus on blame missed the most pressing issue, that the oil continued to spew and that there was no assurance of a fix. Whether it’s our national limited attention span that makes this “old news” after a week, or our soap opera mentality that makes us focus on the melodrama, the politics, the personalities, we have no focused on the fact that the oil continues to spew, potentially altering life as we know it in the gulf and, possibly, the planet.
Mike at Crime & Federalism has posted a video of Fareed Zakaria on CNN discussing the media’s failure to address this travesty.
This oil spill may prove to be one of the most significant events of this generation, and the focus is on the amount of emotion demonstrated by the President. Zakaria blames the media for playing the emotion card, but it’s unclear whether the media is misdirecting the public’s focus or merely giving the public what it craves. He’s no doubt right that the media could, and should, maintain its integrity by being above the tear-jerker play, by reporting the news rather than pandering to the national desire for cathartic release.
And Mike nailed it when he wrote, “Image is everything – which means that substance is nothing.”
For lawyers, who pretend to be above such pettiness as image, the self-absorption with feelings is every bit as strong and misguided as with those who swoon over the latest Twilight movie. Soap operas are going the way of dinosaurs because they can’t compare with the melodrama of our everyday life.
And what’s so wrong with being caught up in feelings, eschewing substance for the heart-wrenching, soul-torturing, tear-jerking fodder that some desire so deeply and feed upon as if it’s truly meaningful? The thrill derived by feelings allows us to avoid and ignore the harshness, the unpleasantness, of a substantive reality that we readily ignore.
The oil is still spewing. How does that make you feel?
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Imagine you’re a reporter assigned to the oil spill. On the one hand, you could conduct detailed interviews with engineers to learn about deep-ocean drilling, blowout prevention, and oil recovery. Then maybe you could interview scientists about the ocean ecology and how it’s affected by such a large spill. After that, you could interview economists and lawyers about the effect on the economy and the legal avenues for local businesses to recover damages from BP. You could write detailed stories about all these things, bundling your hard-won knowledge into lengthy stories filled with technical background.
Alternatively, you could quote from press releases issued by politicians, pundits, and party hacks, and then write about feelings, which everybody already understands.
Both options pay the same.
No doubt it’s easier to report crap. And it’s also far easier to read/see it. An easy world, no thinking required.
There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking. — Sir Joshua Reynolds
More than the spill – spills happen and, yes, they are terrible and must be addressed – is the $20B claims fund that has been created.
It might fall under one cateogory for companies to reclaim their losses but wasn’t there already an avenue for that?
My main concern is that there is no legal authority other than, “We’re the Fed, you do what we say” to create such a fund.
I’ve seen precious little reported in writing regarding the legality of forcing a company to create such a fund.
Life on the planet is about to end and your only concern is what you can blame on Obama? Glad to see that your priorities are straight.
Well… As long as life is really about to end and as long as it isn’t George Bush taking advantage of the crisis du jour, I suppose I can ignore any injustice that comes out of D.C.
See? Now we’re all happy again.