If you have a pulse and know someone who can read, odds are that you’ve at least heard in passing of oil giant BP’s greedy Gulf Coast fiasco. In a shameless display of personal motives, BP offered laughably low-end estimations of the gravity of the spill while sending red-faced fall guys to the front lines of press releases. Behind the scenes BP’s public marketing image has changed drastically, albeit subtly, since the spill. Not surprising, since even amidst the onyx tide, BP’s advertising budget has more than tripled in comparison to the same period last year, according to the LA Times.
On their official website, BP now highlights its efforts to buy its way back into the hearts of the American public while the corporation’s spin doctors hold on to the credo “no publicity is bad publicity,” and a distinct “cha-ching” sound is heard by a small percentage of the population as Murdoch’s mass media machine pulls the ole’ smoke and mirrors.
To the suits that hold the high cards, a man-made natural disaster is just another day at the office. For the people who have had to endure insincere readings of, “Sorry your husband died,” and, “My bad for drastically altering the Gulf Coast as we’ll know it for several decades” Hallmark cards from executives that have more digits in their annual income than they do on both hands, the effects of BP’s carelessness can’t be rationalized by a cost-benefit analysis.
As the coast becomes a guinea pig for the effects of using dispersant chemicals underwater and in the open ocean in the midst of what appears to be more an effort by BP to save face than planet, many Americans seem to have been successfully lulled back to sleep by empty promises from talking heads.
Others who seek a more direct approach to social justice are alive and real but don’t have the fiscal support of News Corp. to help spread their message. Of course, even if these hypothetical heroes were heard, they wouldn’t be listened to unless the cover page of their report proudly displayed a bulleted list of solutions that fit within projected profit margins.
Amidst the illusion of powerlessness, we as a nation must remember that the words “hope” and “change” belong to the backbone of our society – the people, not the puppets.
Despite constant attacks on our psyche (subliminal or otherwise), we have the ability to stand on our own two feet; to make mindful, informed decisions and follow through on them, and to shape the future however we choose based on our present actions. We’ve sat by and watched as further offshore drilling was given the green light in the blackened wake of the Deepwater Horizon, but it’s never too late to reevaluate ourselves as individuals and as a collective.
And so to you, my beloved peers, I beg: let’s not let this become another issue of red vs. blue. Perhaps we can instead see this as an opportunity to take responsibility for our actions, to gain awareness of ourselves as part of a supply and demand system. Let’s open our eyes and arms to alternative energy that already exists but lies deep below miles of hush-money, and let’s wake up the sleeping giant that is our generation so that we may seize the reins and steer ourselves far away from complacency.