I don't know about you, but I don't think I can handle another shot of a pitiful, petrol-encapsulated pelican. This is not because the Ol' Bloviator has become desensitized to the still-unfolding tragedy of the BP disaster, but rather that he just gets sick at heart and stomach to see an uncomprehending creature suffer such a fate. I see no relief from these images, however, until somebody's kid shows up coated in Valvoline from head to toe:, resulting in the following oceanside exchange:
"Marvin!
What's that all over little Curtis? Has he been helping you change your oil
again? Why would you want to do that at the beach?"
"Aw, calm down, Becky Sue. I just lost track of him for a little bit while I was fumbling around in the cooler for a beer. A little oil ain't never hurt nobody. Besides, we're down a quart or two in the Taurus, and we should be able to scrape enough off him to at least get us back to Notasulga, so Buster can take a look at it."
Resist it if you must, but such a conversation is by no means unthinkable, especially with the old slickeroo bearing down on the "Redneck Riviera," stretching along the Alabama-Florida Gulf Coast, from Gulf Shores to Panama City. They've been scooping up tar balls and such for a few days at some points there already, although bon vivants around the globe will be immensely relieved to learn that the conditions remains el primo at the historic Flora-Bama Lounge and Package Store, which sits on the Alabama-Florida line at Perdido Key. The Flora-Bama is best known, of course, for hosting the annual Interstate Mullet Toss, the Redneck Riviera's signature, self-defining event, wherein typically blind-drunk contestants, who may or may not be sporting mullet coiffure, vie to see who can heave a mullet of the piscine variety farthest across the state line. Well, truth is, there may have been a few tar balls here and there near the F-B, but the good news is that so far the seaweed is glopping all of them up, and not to worry, if there gets to be more oil than seaweed, the establishment's management has procured a nice stash of hay, which, given its constituency, was probably not hard to come by.
The OB
obviously doesn't mean to make light of the oil spill, which is not only a
deadly serious matter in the literal sense, but a phenomenon that actually
reveals the complicated connections and contradictory attitudes that define
contemporary life in these United States. There's hardly need here to get into
what this whole thing says about our need to cut way back on our dependence on
oil. Although the currently estimated flow of forty thousand barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico each day is massive
enough to produce incalculable environmental damage at least as far away as the
coast of North Carolina, it represents less than 2/10 of 1 percent of the twenty-one million barrels we
polish off every day. We may "tut-tut" and "tch-tch" all we please about the
environmental indifference of development-mad countries like China, but what has
happened here is that a company focused way too much of its energy and
resources on extracting as much of a valuable resource as quickly and profitably
as possible, with far too little attention either to the possible consequences
of a flub-up in the extraction process or to any means of avoiding said flub
up. This is purely and simply a classic human behavior pattern. Left to our own
devices, we are all but certain to concentrate on doing that which will reward
us most handsomely in the here and now and hope like hell that our actions
don't cause problems later on. After
hearing ad nauseum since the Reagan era about how wicked government is and how
great it would be to rid ourselves of its meddlesome regulations, we saw the
oil-drunk Bushies simply entrust oversight of the oil industry to
representatives of the oil industry. So much for self-regulation. If you're
gonna leave the foxes in charge of the hen house, don't get your heart set on
chicken 'n dumplings for dinner. I note also in passing that the same folks who've been yelling loudest about keeping government weak and uninvolved are now demanding in equally full cry that Washington step in and fix this thing immediately, before the pristine beach in front of their exclusive vacation homes starts to look like drain floor at a Jiffy-Lube.
Anyone who thinks that the lesson of the BP disaster will be learned and taken to heart voluntarily need simply note the speedy comeback of derivatives in the investment sector. No one can say for sure that an authentic government regulatory presence of some sort would have prevented this mess, but every oil-encased pelican they force us to gaze upon is a testament to what happened without one.
I just pray that ten months from now we aren't subjected to a still sorrier spectacle when frustrated, beer-soaked Flora-Bama patrons discover they can't even get a grip on their oil-soaked mullets, much less throw 'em into the next state. Let's face it, fish ain't really engineered for flingin' anyhow, and a thick coat of Castrol doesn't promise to make it any easier.
