From our Friends Across The Pond: Stop the Anti-British Rhetoric, Obama

[Chuckiechan]

Obama, Stop the Anti-British Rhetoric on BP and the Oil Spill - The Daily Beast

The first sign that the Brits were going to take the rap for the oil spill came with Obama’s constant references to “BRITISH Petroleum,” a name that was dropped more than a decade ago, after the merger with America’s Amoco turned the British oil company into a transnational conglomerate. The British media quickly concluded that the president wanted to make out that the spill was all the fault of evil foreigners, if only to hide his own administration’s inadequate response to the crisis. Even the normally mild-mannered and very pro-Obama Financial Times urged the president to “stop treating BP as a hostile and alien entity.” BP, after all, employs more people in America than it does in Britain and is 40 percent-owned by U.S. institutions; it even provides the U.S. military with most of its fuel.

-Snip-

It has long been feared that Obama had an anti-British streak running through him. The removal of the bust of Winston Churchill, which his predecessor had proudly displayed in the Oval Office, caused consternation. The inappropriate gift to the queen, an iPod loaded with 40 show tunes, provoked puzzlement. The references in his autobiography to his grandfather being mistreated by the British in colonial Kenya, despite any evidence being proffered to substantiate the claim, was taken to be the source of his hostility to America’s most loyal ally.

[de_day]

I've noticed this too and it makes no sense. It's like some nation who had a rash of accidents involving Chevy to blame the US. It's another example of the administration not doing its homework and not knowing what it's talking about.

[Creatures]

anti-british?
It's called British petroleum, how else would you call it?

Creatures

[Steve R Jones]

Nope - as the OP stated - the name was changed ten years ago to BP

But they are being kind of thin skinned.

I can relate to an extent...I've seen many tv cop shows talking about presidential visits. Many have made statements like "We don't want another Dallas."

[Creatures]

so BP is not an abbreviation any more? didn't catch that, sry

Creatures

[surreal]

Right, BP isn't British Petroleum anymore than KFC is Kentucky Fried Chicken..

[Theophylact]

This is just BP's public relations department trying to stir up sympathy. Seems to be working.

By the way, BP wasn't always "British Petroleum" before it became just a pair of letters; it was the Anglo-Pesrian Oil Company (1909-1935), then the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company until 1954, when it became British Petroleum. In 1998 it merged with Amoco, becoming BP Amoco; in 2001, after gobbling up Arco and Burmah-Castrol, it became BP and adopted the slogan "Beyond Petroleum" (yeah, right).

[Chuckiechan]

Wow, others are getting pissed:

"Obama's Not Your Daddy"

Barack Obama’s Gulf Spill Oval Office Speech - The Daily Beast

I understand they are in talks with China? China will buy their US drilling interests in a heart beat.

And... I believe BP stands for "Beyond Petroleum".

Hmmm... do sea birds burn?

[Gomer]

Your article. Chuck:

The irony is that George W. Bush played the Daddy role with conviction. He grabbed a bullhorn at the World Trade Center and shouted, "I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon." When he went to West Point and made speeches, there was no dispiriting nuance to his message to the troops. We were over there in Iraq to kick ass and take names.

We know what happened next. Just as we also know now about a lot of things Bush was so commander-in-chiefy about. How the new Homeland Security agency he announced with such fanfare soon ballooned from the “agile and elite staff of 300 people reporting to the Director of National Intelligence…who would break up the bureaucratic layers” recommended by the 9/11 Commission to a bloated 2,000 staff members so confused about their chain of command that a new report cited by Peggy Noonan an unidentified Justice Department source claims: "We are totally unprepared......Right now, being totally effective would never happen. Everybody would be winging it."

We also know that Bush stuffed agencies charged with overseeing our safety, like FEMA and the Mine Safety and Health Administration, with incompetent political cronies—nothing nuanced about that—and that under the Bush-Cheney rule of Big Oil, the Minerals Management Service agency became a crew of corrupt, lethargic backscratchers signing off on egregious lapses in offshore drilling safety in return for the usual cheesy perks of the good ol’ boy business culture. (If you want a laugh, take a look at the picture in Rolling Stone this month of the now-former MMS associate director Chris Oynes. Even the most foaming liberal movie director would hesitate to cast this 300-pound Rush Limbaugh lookalike clamped in a necktie.)

Obama can’t change his cool disposition though it would be nice if he lost the vaguely grudging air he gives off that problems of management get in the way of ideas. What he lacks in Big Daddy empathy skills he just has to make up for in raw politics. Bill Clinton was the master of that, mostly because unlike Obama he enjoyed it. By now Clinton would have reached out to every one on the planet (even James Cameron) who knew anything about deep sea drilling, BP, big oil, and wetland wildlife and absorbed those competing opinions into the radar of his responses. He would have convened all those Republican Gulf State governors at the White House right away, and in doing so won political points for showing the true meaning of bipartisanship. He would have summoned not just this new BP character, the faceless chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, but the familiar, juicy target, Tony Hayward—if only so the public could see the delinquent CEO ordered like a chastened schoolboy to the principal’s office. He would have convened not just BP but all the other oil companies to force out the best ideas in a fanfared Oval Office meeting. And for sure he would have called James Carville personally and got his yelling fetus-face off CNN. That alone would make us all feel better about what really ails us. The feeling that the black, gushing oil spill is a huge and terrifying metaphor for the seeping of American power, an overwhelming karmic punishment for the profligacy of our civilization as we burn up billions of dollars of biological material in a few short hours.

Didn't realize that you subscribed to the idea that this was all Bush's fault, that what is needed is a bigger dog and pony show with Hayward in the middle of it, or the take away message at the end of the article.

[sharder8]

The big problem for Obama in this crisis . . . is he as no leadership or management experience! He doesn't know or understand how to jump in and take command of the situation. But, he's who the majority wanted to lead the country.

Every day, those 2 lacks are becoming clearer and more evident.


Harder

[Chuckiechan]

It's lots of people's fault. Most notably the US consumer who refuses to pay $ 4.00 a gallon of gasoline.

The point of the article is Obama is a failure.

[tony_j15]

The big problem for Obama in this crisis . . . is he as no leadership or management experience! He doesn't know or understand how to jump in and take command of the situation.

I keep hearing this repeated, but no one has actually given me an answer as to HOW he is supposed to show "leadership." He an executive figurehead, not a football coach. What, specifically, do you want from him?

[Theophylact]

What, specifically, do you want from him?

Whatever it is that he's not doing at the moment. If he does deliver a harangue or get all emotional, they'll complain that he's blown his cool and ought to act more "presidential", as they did when he said he'd kick ass.

[zen]

I keep hearing this repeated, but no one has actually given me an answer as to HOW he is supposed to show "leadership." He an executive figurehead, not a football coach. What, specifically, do you want from him?

How about exactly what he's doing, except MAYBE 2 MONTHS AGO!!!!!