Who Needs the Three Stooges? We Have BP!

It's been nearly a month since my last blog, in which I lamented the BP oil debacle, and as expected, the oil has now reached our Florida shores - no longer as mere tar balls, but as shiny, black, gooey, toxic waves relentlessly rendering the pristine beaches in Pensacola an utterly hideous hue. Next stop, Panama City! And while this is happening, BP manages to allow a robotic submersible to accidentally knock off a cap on the mile-below-the-surface gusher so that the volume spewing out practically doubles! Hell, who needs Larry, Curly and Moe when you've got BP! I'd laugh if it wasn't so damned tragic!

In short order, we will move well beyond any descriptive conceivable by even the most creative of poets and linguists. We will stand, mouths agape, voices silenced by the sheer magnitude of what lay before us. While the world tries to go about its business - blaring vuvuzelas signaling another World Cup come to South Africa - we cannot push the Gulf oil disaster to the back pages. It simply won't allow us to. From loose-lipped generals and history-making marathon matches at Wimbledon, to Tiger Woods' impending divorce and a Republican titan of corporate corruption running for governor of Florida, these are merely sideshows that steal a headline or two. THE story, now and for months, if not years, will be the GOM - the Gulf of Mexico.

Yesterday, a photograph in the St. Petersburg Times showed a thirty-something man kneeling on a once-pristine beach crying into his hands as the oil spread before him in both directions as far as the eye could see. This native Pensacolan, the article went on to say, had been taught by his father how to swim in the warm waters off this very beach, and it is where he, in turn, had taught his own son to swim. No more. Fathers won't be teaching sons or daughters to swim in these waters any time soon - if ever again.

You know, I've always considered myself a pragmatic optimist, if there is such a thing. I try to look at the bright side, yet I understand the limitations of man and our inclination toward self-indulgence and self-enrichment. So, not a lot surprises me, good or bad. When the former CEO of the largest for-profit hospital company on the planet, a company fined over a BILLION dollars for ripping off Medicare while he was CEO, throws his hat in the ring for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Florida and proceeds to spend his way to the top of the polls in a little over ninety days, I simply shrug my shoulders and go about my business. I mean, the guy never went to jail, or was even indicted for that matter, so why not empty a few mil out of the ol' money market account and run for governor of the fourth-largest state? Who says being an elected official requires integrity? Why, maybe he's just the guy to extort enough $$$ from BP and it's drilling partners to pay for all the cleanup! And with his vast experience in milking insurance providers (Medicare is insurance, you know), perhaps he can sort out our ridiculous homeowners insurance situation in Florida. "Lets get to work," he says in his commercials.

Let's get to work, indeed! Let's elect Rick Scott, and then let's go and elect Marco Rubio - another pillar of electoral integrity - to the U.S. Senate. All he did was make a party-supplied AmEx card his personal piggy bank for a couple years while sitting atop the Florida legislature. He never so much as sniffed the glue on the sealed envelope of an indictment, let alone do time, so by God, let's plop him right down in the middle of Senate chambers in Washington and let him do his thing. He's a natural! He's the Roy Hobbs of the GOP! He's someone Florida can be proud of!

Ah, but I digress. What's the old saying? "Strap yourself in; it's going to be a bumpy ride." Not only is the oil disaster going to be a bumpy ride, it's going to be a long one, so pack a sandwich and while you're at it, a case or two of Dawn detergent, because we all might find ourselves scrubbing cormorants and pelicans and terns and turtles before this is all over. And hey, Rick and Marco, whether you win or lose, know that I for one, have no qualms about you running for office. After all, it's the American way. It's the getting elected part I can do without. All this talk about the Gulf gets me . . .

. . . Wishin' I Was Fishin'