Bob Herbert: More Than Just an Oil Spill

[highplainsdem]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/22/opinion/22herbert.html

More Than Just an Oil Spill

By BOB HERBERT
Published: May 21, 2010

Hopedale, La.

-snip-

The response of the Obama administration and the general public to this latest outrage at the hands of a giant, politically connected corporation has been embarrassingly tepid. We take our whippings in stride in this country. We behave as though there is nothing we can do about it.

The fact that 11 human beings were killed in the Deepwater Horizon explosion (their bodies never found) has become, at best, an afterthought. BP counts its profits in the billions, and, therefore, it’s important. The 11 men working on the rig were no more important in the current American scheme of things than the oystermen losing their livelihoods along the gulf, or the wildlife doomed to die in an environment fouled by BP’s oil, or the waters that will be left unfit for ordinary families to swim and boat in.

This is the bitter reality of the American present, a period in which big business has cemented an unholy alliance with big government against the interests of ordinary Americans, who, of course, are the great majority of Americans. The great majority of Americans no longer matter.

No one knows how much of BP’s runaway oil will contaminate the gulf coast’s marshes and lakes and bayous and canals, destroying wildlife and fauna — and ruining the hopes and dreams of countless human families. What is known is that whatever oil gets in will be next to impossible to get out. It gets into the soil and the water and the plant life and can’t be scraped off the way you might be able to scrape the oil off of a beach.

It permeates and undermines the ecosystem in much the same way that big corporations have permeated and undermined our political system, with similarly devastating results.

[Mojorabbit]

1. He hasn't been to Florida

and spoken with people here who are pissed to the max about this and who are also heartbroken too. Tepid my ass.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Bob Herbert gets it.

Thank you.

[Greybnk48]

3. We have no voice, we're powerless. But he's wrong to say we don't care.

Most people i know are furious, but there seems nothing we can do. We only have a couple allies in the media, the rest are bought and paid for. It was not like this in the past. So sad.

[truedelphi]

4. If Eric Holder had any cajones, he'd be pinning every possible fine on BP.

Or does terrorism only count when it wears a Moslem, rather than business suit, garb?