Spilled Chocolate

Brietbart and Drudge are having fun with this clip of a Democratic congressman using 'spilled chocolate milk' to describe the oil slick. Not sure how that relates to earlier chocolate comparisons made about New Orleans by another Democrat, but overall it's pretty weak tea.

Clearly the congressman was trying to downplay a spill described as worse than the Exxon Valdez, not only for political reasons but most likely economic ones, but maybe he's correct. This CNN animation seems to show the slick shrinking today, and forecast to be even smaller tomorrow..



As the video shows, the slick started small and the Coast Guard was out there downplaying it early on. Obama was clearly being briefed, but sometimes things get out of control and information is wrong. When it grew they responded. There will always be second-guessing.

The criticism here should be more about perception and media coverage. On the former, Obama appeared aloof for a week, only sending subordinates while initially making a big issue out of the mining disaster in West Virgina. There was that big offshore drilling decision to worry about. On the latter, the media is indeed making it a big story but that story isn't so much about Obama or his politics, but about the slick. As it should be.

But we all know that if the oil men were still in the White House the story would be as much about their complicity/incompetence as the spill, with enviros and media hacks holding oil-coated birds while crying into the camera. We might even see someone like Spike Lee preparing a documentary about how a Cheney-led conspiracy including Halliburton probably blew the BOP in an effort to spike pump prices. Evidently the media has entered a world of balance where they no longer find it necessary to openly speculate or inflame such narratives.