Look at the Op-Ed columns in print and online. Listen to the noise coming from talk-radio. Watch intently the garbage beamed into your television sets. Take all of the above in, then ask yourself, what are the important and newsworthy issues with regards to The Big Spill? Oh some journalists have asked B.P. engineers and others what happened, and other journalists have dug deep enough to find out which politicians have taken money from B.P. (all of them, apparently). We have heard from Haley Barbour that the spill is nothing and we need to drill more. We have heard from Sarah Palin that the spill is something, we need tougher regulations, and we need to drill more.
Opinions on the Spill’s meaning run the gamut on the left as well, from recriminations about the President’s response (he isn’t angry enough), to complaints that the President didn’t “fix” the regulatory agency when he took office, to demands that all drilling cease immediately. The opinion-makers, whoever they are, have turned themselves inside out trying to make political hay out of on of the truly devastating industrial disasters in the history of man. In a nation where backwards thinking has become modern art, The Big Spill has inspired a museum full of impressionist garbage. It is past time to say enough!