Gross, on how BP CEO Tony Hayward is making the Gulf oil-spill disaster even worse (via newsweek)From the outset, there’s been a sense that Hayward wasn’t quite prepared for this and didn’t quite grasp what is at stake. The Wall Street Journal reported that Hayward “admitted that the oil giant had not the technology available to stop the leak. He also said in hindsight, it was ‘probably true’ that BP should have done more to prepare for such an emergency.”
As the spill worsened, Hayward fretted that he and BP were its victims. “What they hell have we done to deserve this?” he reportedly told fellow executives. Of course, Hayward isn’t the victim here. The sea life, the sea itself, the employees who died, the fishermen who are losing their livelihoods, the tourism industry, responsible drillers—they’re the victims. Hayward should have been asking himself: What they hell did they do to deserve this? And what am I going to do fix it?
The private grumbling has been matched by public bumbling. Hayward has used unfortunate metaphors. “We will only win this if we can win the hearts and minds of the local community,” he said, apparently unaware that “hearts and minds” is a phrase forever identified with the debacle of the Vietnam War. And in a moment of exquisitely bad taste, Hayward said: “Apollo 13 did not stop the space program. The Air France airplane that fell out of the sky off of Brazil did not stop the aviation industry.” Among the many crucial differences between Apollo 13 and this oil spill: Apollo 13 turned out to be a feel-good triumph of engineering, since the astronauts came home alive. The BP spill is simply an epic fail.
May 18th
