Ever since the gulf oil spill disaster started, I have seen scores of politicians, political analysts, reporters, actors (yes real Hollywood actors), game show hosts, theme park cartoon characters, instant internet millionaires, and many other experts in the subject, providing their invaluable advice and appearing angry on TV. Let me rephrase that to: appearing really REALLY angry on TV.
I can understand why politicians need to show their anger on TV; at the end of the day, they are elected by their constituents who, in turn, are also really mad; so I take it this is their form of saying: “Uh… my fellow Americans, I don’t really know what’s going on or who is in charge, but I am certainly DOING something: I am appearing myself angry on TV! That shows leadership; that shows strength, and of course it shows that I am listening to my constituents.
To be fair, Louisiana’s Governor Bobby Jindal is actually really doing something. He is moving tons of sand, according to his logic, to create barriers that will stop the oil from getting into pristine marshes and beaches. I am not a famous Hollywood actor and therefore not an expert on how to stop the oil; but hell, that actually does make sense to me; of course if it wasn’t for the hundreds of miles that Bobby would need to cover to protect every single area that can be affected. Not sure that he can protect it all, and specially knowing that the gulf stream current, as any respected expert in the subject is predicting, is, potentially, expected to shift the oil to cover every single beach in the United States including all the beaches in the West coast from Baja California to Alaska, and thus most importantly, the Santa Monica beach, where most of these experts reside.
Some lesser known experts outside of Santa Monica, which for the purposes of this discussion I am going to call “scientists”, are saying that transferring sand from one place to another is actually worse, and they may be right: I mean, again, I am not an expert, but if you dig a huge industrial hole somewhere in order to dump the sand in the ocean, that my friends seems like another environmental disaster to me. Not to mention the turtle eggs that will get squashed by the bulldozers digging for sand.
As a well informed tourist, you should know that this summer you can choose between sipping a margarita at a relaxing bulldozer infested beach hole, or taking your family to any of our oil covered beaches filled with oil covered pelicans… like, potentially, the Santa Monica beach. As for me, I am ready to fill the tank of my SUV and drive south to Mexico, where it seems that the only known catastrophe has been their soccer team losing in the World Cup. I will keep the engine running as I continue to enjoy our Florida beaches until oil drenched pelicans start falling from the sky.
Maurice Pinto
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