Oh, yes, Tony Hayward, you and BP “will get this done” and you “will make it right.”
Meantime, stop spending your millions to spread your unctuous, ill-timed, ill-conceived advertising all over my TV and newspapers. Get off American television and out of America’s face and go back to England where, maybe, they still like you. We don’t want you and your utterly worthless apologies here. Give your ad money to the Louisiana fishermen whose livelihoods you’ve ruined. Give it to the families of the men who died when the Deepwater Horizon blew up. Give it to the environmental groups who are struggling to save dying wildlife in the marshlands you’ve destroyed, or to the resort owners whose beaches and businesses you’ve ruined. Stand — no, kneel — on the street in Venice, Louisiana, and hand out cash.
Every time your insensitive, self-serving ad comes on, I get angry all over again. BP has caused the worst environmental disaster in this nation’s history and ads were the best thing you could think of to do with $50 million!?
I would hate to be in this guy’s shoes.
It’s just my opinion, but I doubt there’s anything he can do that he isn’t trying to do to rectify the terrible mess that everyone blames on him, on his company, on his companies business plan, on his collaboration with government agencies pursuing ill-conceived investments with their typical promises of future bailouts, on regulators that follow directions (or look the other way) written by the petroleum industry being regulated and on the legislature and presidents that codified the environment that gave birth to this whole despicable mess.
There is no bright side. If there was one, it would have to be the exposure of all the unanticipated negative consequences that occur when the government attempts to create market incentives based on political agendas that inspire malinvestments. The cost of this particular episode included human lives, but the fallout from the mortgage, mortgage insurance, banking and vehicle company bailouts are still destroying livelihoods and the very value of the US Dollar.
Lost livelihoods are hard to capture with a camera. BP isn’t so lucky.
I’m sure Hayward and other BP execs are doing everything they possibly can to to repair their well and minimize/repair the damage. It is, after all, costing them a ton in money and reputation. But I think it was pretty hair-brained of them to think any sort of ad campaign right now could possibly help them. The public isn’t believing anything they have to say and Hayward, in particular, has proven to be an insensitive, insincere foot-in-mouth twit. The only thing BP can do right now to rescue their image is “plug the damn hole” and return the Gulf to its pre-spill condition. That’s going to take a lot of money, hard work, and time. An ad campaign right now is worse than useless; it’s insulting.
Nobody can argue with that. Not rationally anyway.