DIAF, Digby Jones

“Obama is saying to himself ‘How can I distance myself from this problem?’ His answer is to throw BP to the wolves.” — Lord Digby Jones, U.K. businessman, on the President’s repeated references to “British Petroleum” being viewed as anti-British in the U.K. The company hasn’t traded under that name for 10 years (Source: TIME)

Screw you, Digby. Don’t think you’re getting off light just because we have the same last name. I haven’t had this last name long enough to give you a pass on your shit. Whatever Obama’s failure in responding to the situation, if he’s throwing them to the wolves, it’s because THEY DESERVE TO BE DEVOURED BY WOLVES.

On his website, Jones goes on to say: “Of course BP are responsible. Of course BP are liable. Of course BP are due a good kicking from every politician to every journalist through the environmentalists and naturalists on the way. But are they totally and solely to blame? Clearly Mother Nature is beating the technology.”

Yeah, that bitch has been out to get us for millions of years. Just look at Vesuvius.

“There are many others who should take a long hard look in the mirror before being so quick to point the finger … and one group that should be doing that is the gas guzzling, dividend enjoying, tax receiving public … ourselves.”

Those old ladies trying not to freeze to death in the dead of winter are total scumbags. Hate eating your meat raw? Scumbag! Does this mean you’ll be giving up your cushy life to live in the woods with a bucket and a spear, Digby? Didn’t think so.

He’s confusing two separate issues. The fact that we use too much oil is a flaw of our civilization. The fact that oil is coating the Gulf of Mexico like a thick layer of diarrhea is BP’s fault.

His words are especially interesting considering the collapse of the IT contractor iSOFT and the investigation into its accounting practices while he was non-executive director: “There is a limit to what a non-executive can know. … They have to rely on what advisers tell them and what the executive team tells them. It is important that people understand this.”

Yes, we understand. We understand that, apparently, you didn’t see iSOFT disintegrating around you when you had a front-row seat to the whole mess, but the rest of us need to be navel-gazing about what went wrong in the Gulf of Mexico.

Playing the “everyone shares a little bit of blame” game obfuscates reality: that BP made a giant fucking mess in a spectacular display of greed and incompetence. And yeah, it’s probably the Minerals Management Service’s fault, too, but that’s like screwing up at your job and blaming your boss for not supervising you carefully enough. It’s a weak excuse and makes you sound like a whiny biotch. If I were driving drunk and killed someone with my car, I could blame Toyota for not making the brakes responsive enough, the local bar for making such tasty apple martinis, the bartender for not noticing I was drunk and my mom for raising the kind of person who would drink and drive, but ultimately, I’m the one who snuffed a life.

DIAF, Digby Jones.