Boris Johnson Can Kiss My Ass

"Hey, you know who else you guys are being too hard on? Emperor Palpatine. He's just misunderstood!"

When I was in kindergarten and first grade, back when I lived in Longview, Washington, the gas station near my school was a BP station. The running joke among me and my classmates was that it would be really funny if the lower bump on the ‘B’ wore off, so then the sign would just say ‘PP,’ which, I’ve got to admit, would still be kind of funny, regardless of current events.*

*Some perennially muddy hillbilly kid with a tougher upbringing than the rest of us suggested a circumstance in which the sign would read ‘BS,’ but at the time that joke was way over our heads.

Even then I was interested in England, because I knew that was where double decker buses and James Bond were from, and so every day when my Mom drove me to school and we passed the big sign that said ‘BP – British Petroleum’, I would always think about how cool it was that the British had been kind enough to put a piece of their culture in our tiny, cat-pee smelling town – like a little embassy where you could buy propane and Doritos.

That was 1994. A lot has changed since then.

For one thing, in 2001, BP changed its name to BP, which stood for ‘Beyond Petroleum.’ This was meant to reflect their commitment to being an environmentally friendly oil producer with an eye on alternative energy research and development.

And then, a couple of months ago, one of their poorly maintained oil rigs exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killed a bunch of people, and opened up a pipe which is gushing fajillions of barrels of oil into a delicate marine ecosystem on a daily basis. So, y’know, maybe they could’ve gotten Beyond Petroleum a little sooner. Solar panels are much more pelican friendly.

I’m not going to recap everything else, because you know it: BP has been lying and stifling the media and failing in its attempts to stop the leak, and Tony Hayward is saying all the wrong things, and the government is launching a criminal investigation and talking some serious trash about BP.

That’s where London mayor Boris Johnson, the Jack Brazil lookalike who you may remember from last week, comes into play:

(From ABC News)

Criticism of British oil giant BP has reached fever pitch in the US since the rig exploded more than 50 days ago.

Senior US politicians have recently begun referring to the company as British Petroleum, a name the business has not used since 1998, and president Barack Obama has said he would sack BP’s top executive Tony Hayward.
Now outspoken London mayor Boris Johnson has hit back, saying he wants an end to what he says is “anti-British rhetoric”…

…Mr. Johnson does not deny BP has made monumental mistakes, but he has called for an end to the trashing of an iconic UK company.

“[It] starts to become a matter of national concern if a great British company is being continually beaten up on the international airwaves,” he said.

“OK, [it] presided over a catastrophic accident... but ultimately it was an accident that BP I think is paying a very, very heavy price [for] indeed.”

I get that a lot of English pensions are tied up in BP. I get that BP is a major part of England’s economy. I get that if BP goes under, it’s going to be very bad for England.

But seriously now, shut the fuck up, you good for nothing limey piece of shit.

Please forgive my language, but the last time I checked, the dead dolphins were washing up on American shores, choking on crude oil gushing out of a BP well, which only exploded because of your so called “great British company.”

Your great British company, sir, that was named one of the world’s ten worst companies by Mother Jones Magazine two times because of its environmental and human rights record. Your great British company which, for two years, dumped toxic chemicals in Alaska’s North Slope. Your great British company, which cut corners on safety and maintenance, thereby allowing a refinery in Texas City to blow up and kill 15 people. Your great British company, which spilled 5000 barrels of oil in Prudhoe Bay. Your great British company, which the EPA called the most polluting company in the United States – and that was before Deepwater Horizon.

Honestly, I’m sort of shocked that you’re still associating yourself with these J-holes. If I were you, not only would I be keeping my mouth shut about how the United States is cleaning up the mess your ‘great British company’ made, I’d be systematically flushing documents and killing witnesses Goodfellas style to erase any evidence of the fact that BP ever was a British company. I’d be lobbying Parliament to revoke Tony Hayward’s passport and deport his family. I’d be doing everything in my extremely limited power to make sure the entire fucking world forgot that executives in an office in the city I was mayor of had made the shrewd budgetary decisions that got 11 Americans killed and destroyed an extremely delicate ecosystem, along with virtually every facet of the coastal economies save for hazardous waste cleanup.

It’s quite cute that you think BP is paying a “very, very heavy price.” I suppose they are, when you consider how much that ad campaign ran them, or how difficult it must be to systematically suppress media coverage of oiled beaches and wildlife, or how expensive it is to pay cleanup crews to take three hour lunches.

You know who else is paying a heavy price? The people who are going to watch it literally rain oil as soon as a hurricane scoops up that slick and drops it on Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida – the slick that’s there because your ‘great British company’ was particularly great at being criminally negligent.

If I see Tony Hayward and his boardroom chappies fly out to the Gulf, hop into the water, and drown themselves in that oil slick, then maybe we can talk about whether they paid a great price.

I know that BP was able to get away with running such a shitty* company because the United States systematically deregulated the oil industry and because the agency tasked with enforcing what few regulations remained was so in bed with the industry that the sheets were starting to smell funny.

*Y’know, or ‘great.’ Potato, potahto.

I know that in the past America has fucked England over. I don’t know of any specific times, because there isn’t a Wikipedia page for ‘Times America has fucked England over,” but given America’s penchant for fucking other countries over, I’m very sure it’s happened more than once. I’m not sure if any American companies are responsible for the biggest environmental disaster in British history. I’m not sure if, should that have happened, an American politician tried to tell Englanders how to react. If any of that happened, I sincerely apologize.

But look:

British* Petroleum totally fucked up, and they did such a good job of it that our country is taking it in the pants environmentally and economically. Americans have lost their lives, and a lot of Americans are losing their livelihoods, and for that we can lay the blame squarely on BP.

*I’m reluctant to call BP ‘Beyond Petroleum,’ seeing as they had a full 9 years between adopting that name and Deepwater Horizon to develop environmentally friendly energy solutions and instead decided to spend that time finding new ways to ruin the environment.

Don’t get mad at President Obama for saying he’s looking for an ass to kick, or for saying he’d fire Tony Hayward after he publicly downplayed the extent of the spill, lied about the amount of oil leaking, and whined about wanting his life back. Just so you know, the President trash-talking BP’s CEO isn’t driving the stock prices down nearly as hard as the live video feed of that oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. If you want to blame anyone for BP’s downfall, maybe you should blame BP.

Your company fucked up our country, and we’ll say whatever the hell we want. My deepest condolences to the Englanders who may lose their pensions over this – they can join the Gulf Coast fishermen in the job line.

Truman Capps would also like to congratulate England on being unable to beat America in the World Cup – you know, the team from the country that doesn’t care about soccer. Maybe the oil makes us stronger.