England v USA: BP, Obama and the World Cup
I can't help thinking that there's a whiff of "news is sport, sport is news" about the Obama-bashing in the papers, especially in the run-up to the England v USA World Cup match at the weekend. You might think that the Express's effort
was the worst of the bunch - it's certainly less mature than the little fella in the St George flag on the right of the page - but it bears comparison with the Telegraph's fear-dripping bogeymanification of Obama yesterday
Really? Really Obama's boot on the throat of British pensioners? Is it really his fault that BP and their subcontractors created an enormous oil disaster? Should we all just forget about it because BP has (had) the word "British" in its company name, even though a rather large proportion of its shareholders are not British, and actually - well what do you know? - American.
But no. This must be about the big evil American bogeyman battling against our brave British BP boys. This must be "news is sport", so there can't be anything remotely complicated or nuanced about the situation. Therefore: Obama is the villain of the piece, wrecking 'our pensions' because he's a nasty man; and poor old BP were just trying to do their best, and if they created a massive slick that's wrecking wildlife, well who cares about that; these are OUR PENSIONS for God's sake!
This, to me, is the kind of patriotism I feel uncomfortable about. As you know from previous posts here I'm made up and excited about the World Cup - I love seeing the England flags everywhere and even as a bleeding heart liberal-left do-gooding bastard I feel excited about the prospect of people getting together and enjoying the forthcoming World Cup, particularly the support of my home country. I know that patriotism is a daft an inexplicable thing; but then the feeling of joy when your team scores is something incredible, even if you just happen to follow them through an accident of birth, with your national side or club you love. It's all about a shared feeling, and nowadays I feel football is much less about the chippy little thugs chucking coins as it is about families and mates meeting up and sharing a fun sporting event together as part of a community.
If you've ever been to a large sporting tournament - as I have, lucky enough to attend a World Cup and a European Championship - you'll know the exhilarating feeling of people of different backgrounds and nationalities all mingling together, all wanting different results, all hoping for different outcomes for all of their teams. But no nastiness, not that I've ever seen - no trouble and no hostility; it's even in a place nowadays where you can feel quite relaxed as an England fan in that you're not seen as being the scum of the earth any more, and you're not expected to throw tables around a town centre square and be watercannoned into oblivion. Those days are, I think, pretty much gone. And good riddance.
That's the kind of 'patriotism' I can find myself a part of - a benign sporting event that brings people together in friendly rivalry. Not taking sides between BP and Barack Obama, because one is apparently British and because my pension might be a little bit better off if a giant multinational corporation were not to be clobbered too severely for fucking up the ocean. But it would appear that I'm out of step, on this one, with the press. A lot of them seem to be backing the "Barack vs BP" idea:
Is that really what I want from David Cameron - that he should "stand up" for "my country"? No. Not in this instance. BP isn't my country, and yes, one of my pensions probably might suffer a bit if it invested too much in oil (the other fund I have is 'ethical' so I'm feeling quite smug about that, ho ho); but then that's their fault for investing too much in oil, and, at the risk of wearily repeating myself, the oil company concerned for being responsible for a massive environmental disaster.
This is the simplistic level at which newspapers appear to be operating. It's England v USA in the football, so it's Britain v USA in the oil spill. Boo hiss nasty Barack Obama, daring to hold a (partly British but privatised and actually multinational) company responsible for creating havoc! How dare he! Doesn't he know OUR PENSIONS might be KILLED? Why should he put HIS BOOT onto THE THROAT OF OUR PENSIONERS? Of course, it's a distraction from the world of pain that Cameron & chums are about to inflict on Britain, so it's understandable that his cheerleaders might want to portray our nation as being under attack from outside, rather than within.
It's a funny old world in which the sports pages reflect a sense of national pride that I can identify with, whereas the news pages reflect an outdated, ridiculous notion of patriotism towards a faceless environment-wrecking corporation. The England team and BP are both a bunch of millionaires, but at least the footballers don't do very much harm to anyone. I know who I'm supporting, and it isn't BP.
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June 11th, 2010 - 13:20
Thanks for this! Perfect examples of why so little objective reporting remains in certain Brit (and American) newspapers remain. American anger at BP – and it is not just President Obama who’s angry – is because of one company’s catastrophe fail. Nothing at all to do with the fact that the company is British; if it were an American company, the anger would be just as palpable. There is no anti-British sentiment in the US; this is a complete fabrication of the controversy-manufacturing right-wing press, desperate for headlines.
June 11th, 2010 - 13:27
Oops, please ignore two typos or fix them, please. Was in a rush! And it should be catastrophic, not catastrophe. Sigh.
June 11th, 2010 - 15:09
So… the right wingers wanted private enterprise, with the markets deciding fate through profit and loss, with no interference from government and the global corporations free to do business however they choose…
BP isn’t a national-owned company, it’s the trans-national that they wanted. And yet an attack on BP is an attack on the UK (where I’m sure BP pay a lot of tax, right?).
And parallel to this, the privateers want banks bailed out when banks fuck up, and don’t want an oil company to pay financially and lose value when it fucks up.
Sorry, capitalists. You built the system. You got fat and arrogant on the good times. So fuck you if you have to deal with the bad times too.
I hope BP goes under. I really do.
June 11th, 2010 - 16:29
I am British as fuck and I think Obama (and other Americans) can say what they please about the UK – especially under the circumstances. After all, plenty of people do the same to them. I also hope BP goes under. Bloody rich oily bastards.
June 11th, 2010 - 18:15
Like Tara, I haven’t seen any anti-British press in the US papers, but I have seen just a very few online commentators on blogs (not even people with their own blogs) make anti-British remarks. The best I can tell, no one in the U.S. thinks this is a British problem, but is rather a multi-national problem. The media is coming down pretty hard on Obama over here, too, but because of his stance on drilling for oil. And also because the media likes to slam some presidents and give others a pass, you know how that is.
June 11th, 2010 - 19:05
As far back as I can remember, my Mum has always had an irrational hatred of BP. Refused to fill up at any of their petrol stations. She’s a good judge of character. Thanks, Mum!
June 11th, 2010 - 22:21
Oh, it did make me laugh this morning. I saw the Express first, and thought ‘Oh my words, can they really be putting pensions before this disaster under the veneer of nationaistic rhetoric based on a mutli-racial (OK, maybe not racial, but hay, in the spirit of shit linkage and bullshit) corporate entity that happens to be imploding before our very eyes.’ But, in was the Express, so I moved on.
It seems the trend was to continue, and this has so many layers of bollocks, not just the ones highlighted above by Anton and others, but they really seem to be blaming the black man. Not the country, or even the party he belongs to, or the company, or Haliburton who were partly responsible for building the plant, or the market for dumping shares – but the black, foreign leader.
Who will come to our saviour? Yep, they fully expect Dave the Dartman to convince Barack Obama and the American people the only thing that matters, in this whole situation, is the future dividend payments into British pension funds.
DC: “Barack, please, stop asking how many barrels are spilling. Stop the rhetoric of negativity surrounding BP’s running of this situation. They may be making it up as they go along, continuing to ‘do things on the cheap’, but please, Barack, please, for the sake of an extra £7 a week for future British pensioners, please, be quiet.
BO: “And you are?”
June 12th, 2010 - 09:04
It’s not ‘news is sport’. It’s ‘news is war’. Ever since the 2nd world war (or perhaps the romanticised movie versions) we have inherited this besieged insecurity as part of our national mentality. That’s why we use the same language to describe things as different as war and football: ‘our brave lads’. That, to my mind, is the biggest thign wrong with this country.
June 14th, 2010 - 11:00
‘but then that’s their fault for investing too much in oil, and, at the risk of wearily repeating myself, the oil company concerned for being responsible for a massive environmental disaster.’
well said!
June 14th, 2010 - 20:43
Don’t feel too smug about the pension. I chose the Co-op as a self-righteous student and still use them for everything, but did discover years later that they hold shares in BP and Shell for ‘ethical engagement’ purposes.
June 15th, 2010 - 12:19
Never mind BP and Obama, they’ve taken a photo of a fox!
June 16th, 2010 - 21:24
The faulty part made was American. Whilst BP should pay compensation towards the victims and clean up of this disaster, the US should be quick to regulate its own rig manufacturing industry in the future so that parts with known faults are not reused. Ideally Obama would not have given concessions on deep sea drilling in the first place, but it was the only way to shore up marginal Democrats in the healthcare bill.
June 21st, 2010 - 12:07
I think the main issue is that the other two companies (Transocean and Halliburton) who had equipment or human failures in this incident (because it’s not just BP’s fault) are not being named as much as they are American. Whether that’s a coincidence (which I think it is, mainly because BP stepped up and said they will take responsibility and liability etc as they were the leaseholder and they own the oil being spilled) or not, I think the media are picking up on that and crying foul.
The other issue is that Obama and his administration are yelling at BP (and continuously saying ‘British PEtroleum’ as if to insinuate that an American company would never have done this) but are not stepping in and taking control of the clean up precisely because they know they can’t do anything more than what BP is doing. So we can hate BP for being an oil company (which I don’t, I may dislike some of the leaders but to hate a whole company is just plain silly), we can bemoan the lack of safety checks that occured (which I do) and also bemoan the fact that two other companies fucked up as well and maybe share some of the vitriol around.
I mainly feel sorry for the US BP employees that will most likely lose their jobs when BP lose their US license. Unemployment will rocket in the South. And while Tony Heywood is an idiot and their PR dept should just gag him for the rest of the disaster before dropping him in the oil to see if he absorbs it, the BP employees I know are devastated by this and are working all hours to try to fix it.
June 21st, 2010 - 12:41
Or I could actually spell his name correctly. Sigh. Hayward. This is what spending a week in Rome does to you, it makes you type incorrectly.