The International Writers Magazine: Reality Check & Readers Letters

An Open Letter to BP • James Campion To Tony Hayward CEO Plug the hole already.

This is beyond irresponsible corporate shenanigans now. Sure its criminal, but I don't give a shit about criminal. I expect most of you oil skags to rape land, price fix, bribe officials and other business-as-usual stuff. But I also expect when you drill into the ocean that you have a method to plug the goddamn hole when it leaks or explodes or some other fiasco within, say, a month's time.

What is this now; fifty days and counting?

This goddamn catastrophe has gone on so long I have been unable to avoid writing about it. I figure spinning outrage on oil barons fucking up the environment is akin to whining about the Catholic Church covering up pedophilia. I mean, let's apply some selective creativity in subject matter here. But this is beyond ridiculous now. This, I dare say, and I am hardly a purveyor of hyperbole here, may be the worst environmental corporate disaster in my lifetime.

I repeat, upon reviewing your abysmal record, which shows "760 willful safety violations" as charged by the Occupational Health & Safety Administration in the last three years alone, and horrific EPA toxic release data dating back to 1991, along with massive fines for 104 oil spills in a one-year period between 1997 and 1998, I really don't give a hovering shit. I need oil. I like heat and my car and I don't care how many Arabs and volunteer armed forces have to die for it.

Just plug the hole already.

Shit, I expect a company that in 2005 had its largest refinery explode killing 15 poor Texans and injuring 180 more to be a callous conglomerate of money-hording scum. But these are Texans we're talking about, after all. No one outside of that god forsaken desert patch of yahoos cares a lick about Texans, especially those who expire from its leading export, which, let's face it, and has regurgitated from its diseased womb an alarming number of vapid rich and powerful mediocrities. Those saps would have likely shot themselves in the street anyway.

So I hope I am making this as clear as possible; I am not your run-of-the-mill environmentally compassionate, anti-big business, head-in-the-sand, sign-waving troglodyte. And I am not being facetious when I state emphatically that I worry not a lick about your sordid past or your spectacularly criminal business model or the millions you use to purchase chunks of my government. I accept that this kind of knuckle-grinding immorality comes with the territory.

At least I'm willing to admit it. There may be hardheaded, wise-ass sarcasm peppered with miserable cynicism here, but you won't find an ounce of hypocrisy. Whether the rest of us shake our heads in disgust or moan on talk shows or whip off poetic disdain for the evils of Big Oil, we all need it, jack. We need to drill for it. Thus, we accept the consequences. We're all adults here. Our patience and standards have a variety of weird levels that are hard to press when it comes to getting the stuff. We may get all pissy and boycott you guys and buy it from someone else, but it changes nothing, really.

Do you see anyone boycotting the colossal piles of crap made by child slaves in Chinese basement sweatshops? I have more shit from China in my house right now than not. We just had an Olympics there. It was our best joke: A celebration of the human spirit in the home office for human misery. Never mind that, they poisoned our children. Forget that, we borrow money from them so we can wage wars all over the Middle East for our oil. Honestly. We get it. You're the worst. We're the worst.

Just plug the hole.

Do you think we've forgotten the horrors of 9/11? Nah. It came and went and we still pump the oil. A badly formulated and ill-conceived war to kick a half-assed dictator out of Iraq, and we still keep on truckin' and SUVin' and well, you get the picture. You guys are our sugar daddies and we'll take our beatings and eat your dung and turn around and thank you so very much. We sleep with the great whore and we sleep well.

Hell, we slept right through your 2006 oil operations in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, when neglected corroded pipelines unleashed five-thousand barrels of oil all over our nation's most pristine landscape. But you know what? Fuck Alaska. Its last goddamn governor is a pox on our collective IQ and quite the proponent of drilling-baby-drilling as I recall it. Let Alaska burn.

Just plug the hole.

And if you can't plug the thing, at least cop to it. Jamming mud and garbage down there and hiring dweebs to build robots to piddle around is embarrassing. I can take greedy, apathetic monsters for my Oil Men, just not ineffectual boobs. Those guys get into government. You guys are supposed to be coldly efficient with the occasional wink-wink environmental hazard or easily explainable and paid-off faux pas. People mock the media all the time, but right now online there is a submerged, 24/7 video surveillance of this disaster constantly pumping bilge into the Gulf of Mexico. It's really quite inventive and ingenious and it kicks like gangbusters. The camera works great. Your shit doesn't, and therein lies my problem with the situation.

And forget the government intervening. People down there are not too keen on the government helping with disasters. Chances are the people "helping" were probably hired because they were someone's drinking buddies. We already know the fuck-ups we're dealing with up there. Leave them out of it. Private sector will fix it. It's the American way, or some other tired bullshit. We make it up as we go along, but it works in some strange way, unlike your company, which cannot plug a fucking hole in fifty fucking days.

Plug it. Damn it.

Now.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
James Campion
realitycheck@jamescampion.com
Oil Whore
A Case for the Logical libertarian or Keep Rand Paul off My Philosophies
James Campion
From goofy comparisons of deadly weapons and hate speech to skin hue or religious persuasion, Paul's philosophical libertarianism is replete with hypocrisy

Readers Letters June 13th 2010
This is a goddamned masterpiece. (TAX DAY SPEECH 2010 -- Issue: 4/21/10)You've got my vote if you run, which you could never do: Too honest. Too brilliant. Too hardcore.
    Go! Campion! Go!
Karen Heppel

Did you actually deliver this speech in public? In front of people?
Whether you did or not, I still loved it. "What the hell are you doing in Hackensack?" Classic!
Doctor Slater

Oh, so that's what the noise in the back was about....we all thought it was a person who wandered too far the home.
Donna Lee

OUTSTANDING!!!
Why didn't you let me know? I would have LOVED to have been there...I'm sure you got quite a 'hand' when you finished ;-) !!
Babs

I don't believe it happened. Anybody have a tape of this? If he was in the back of the crowd mumbling to himself, who cares? No one heard him. Just another self-aggrandizing writer who nobody knows and nobody cares. Let him go babble at the supermarket.
Missy

That's the best thing you ever wrote! Can I make a t-shirt of it and sell it to all our friends and then some, and we can both get rich?
Laura Debona

I love it when simpletons accuse people of being simpletons while basing their simpleton positions on a simpleton argument. Thank God James that you are in the minority in this country and thank God for the TEA Party. Thankfully someone will stand up to Obama, the Democrats and RINO Republicans. It's about time (albeit a few years late). We should have dropped the smackdown on Dubya when he started spending like Barney Frank, but like The Who said, "Won't Get Fooled Again".
    This isn't a pro Republican movement; this is for fiscal conservatives who are tired of being told to give more while being accused of being greedy when they say no. They are tired of having a portion of our populace being blamed for the problems in this country while being taxed at confiscatory levels to help fund the people who are attacking them.
These people have as much disdain for RINO Republicans as they do Democrats.
    This is pure ideology with not a whiff of partisan politics. If the Democrats come around and decide balanced budgets, no pay-offs like the Cornhusker Kickback and no earmarks are the way to help save our fiscal future then the TEA Party will be all for them.
    It is funny how liberals are all over the TEA Party. You get no problems at these rallies even after a lib activist was forming a group to crash the Tea Parties and Clinton was trying to paint a picture that doesn't exist. Why is that? What are Democrats so scared of? What are you afraid of James? Americans all over the country are uniting under a banner of fiscal responsibility and what do you and the rest of the "enlightened class" do? You make fun of them. Why is that? Do you want higher taxes; do you want deficits for as long as this country may exist? If you are against fiscal responsibility, what then ARE you for?
Peace,
Bill Roberts

Well...I usually am right in your camp (no pun intended) but this week I guess I can disagree with you a bit. (ARIZONA CALLING -- Issue: 5/12/10) I think it is important to distinguish between the people who come over to the U.S. from Mexico in search of an honest day's work, and the violent rich drug lords who push their product over the border to us, bringing violence in its wake. On the one hand you have the poor man, trying to feed his family. On the other hand, the Fat Cat, trying to run an empire. Just worth distinguishing between the two.
    And there is no such thing as securing the border.  It's phantasmagorical. Like trying to capture a sneeze.

Jonathan Young
North Kingstown, RI

I live in Phoenix, and the one thing that I don't get is this: Jan Brewer has the authority to enact the National Guard to the border, but has failed to do so WHY? Furthermore McCain/Kyl big push for more control at the border is a joke, these Dumbasses had 8 years to do something with the border, but yet they did nothing. So instead of joining with the Dems to figure this out, they find it more appropriate to work against them. How does this help the situation? The two John's need to grow up, and they are the one's talking about being responsible; they both need to look in the mirror.

Martin C.

My son lives in AZ and approves of this law. He told me while I was visiting that a woman knocked on the wrong door. When the woman's cohorts tried to kick in the door they were greeted with gunfire from the lady of the house who was home alone at the time. The would-be robbers of course were illegal aliens.

Steve D.

The unemployment rate is still high, but illegal immigrants have jobs. So I salute Arizona. Plus, what about illegal immigrants paying no taxes but using Americans' money when they get sick and continue to have an American's life? I'm sorry to say, but punish them. Or you can't just give them green card right away. They should go through due process, because this is unfair for those people that are waiting for their visa in a legal way.

AMBOJIA

Regarding Immigration Reform, the lack of Responsible Reform in 2007 is what has Crashed our Economy, and the Violence you refer to is in Mexico and I believe the majority are people being killed or dying that were Deported to the middle of the Desert with out even a drop of water. Americas Deportations have caused this political unrest along the Border!
    The U.N. should be sent to verify how many of the thousands of deaths are drug related or Deported "Humans"!

David Nichols

The comprehensive immigration reform bill to be placed in front of congress solves the border security question. Subsequently, it addresses immigration reform. Conservatives who nay say the proposed law are losing a grand opportunity for a slam dunk since the law is marginally pro immigration.

Tim Paynter

In the short-run, the Democratic Obama Administration should immediately create some kind of public work/jobs program that quickly provides good-paying jobs and free health care for all native-born working-class and lower middle-class people in the USA. And in the long-run, all Mexican citizens will probably eventually be allowed to work and live in the territory in the Southwest that was acquired by the U.S. government from Mexico following the Mexican War of the 1840s without being harassed by federal or state government law enforcement agencies, I imagine.

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