Beyond The Scrunchy

By now, most of you have already read my previous post Send In The Clowns.  What you may not have read were three excellent comments by Charlie Judy, Paul Hebert and Dawn Hrdlica. Each of them had good points that I wanted to respond to in kind.  But I could not write anything worth posting. Except this:

Accidents in this world do happen.  No matter how much we plan.  For the most part, I don't believe that there is an intention to build windshield wipers that set your car on fire, or shampoo that sets your hair on fire, or a flea collar that sets your dog....well, you get the point. But there is a need for us to forget about the tragedies that occur from such accidents.

I understand Dawn's point, and it's one that I learned long ago in HR, to not speak until you have all the facts.  Once all the dust settles, and all of hoopla has died down, that's when the real discovery takes place and history can begin to write itself.  But I just find it truly strange that someone would build something 5,000 feet below sea level where people can't go, and if it broke would be incredibly difficult to fix and would cause immense damage to the surrounding environment, i.e. regional jobs, wildlife, resources, etc.

On one hand, you have the Bernard Madoff's of the world and their objective is to take you for every dime you have.  On the other you have companies that build something and walk away crossing their fingers that nothing bad happens. In both instances, there is a big effort to not only get the general public to forgive but to forget.  We generally do both over the course of time.  And forgiving is a good thing.  It allows us to move past the would of / could of / should of, and figure out real solutions to fix the problem. The forgetting on the other hand is a whole different matter. Granted this oil disaster is going to be hard to forget.  But this is why when I see the Tony Hayward's scrunchy face video, I just can't help but think: they want to draw your sympathies away from those who have suffered from this, and for us to feel sympathy for how bad he's feeling. This way we will forget the oil disaster that much sooner.

So I say to the executives at BP, don't cry on the shoulders of the general public.  Go to your HR department. They'll help you with that.  If you want good PR, concentrate on getting this mess cleaned up. Quit making videos that resemble a photo spread in a National Geographic magazine.

And to the general public, don't let this oil disaster slip our minds so soon.  Don't get caught up in the World Cup (America, really?-do you need a new fad that badly?), or Joran van der Sloot (who is this guy?) or that Sandra Bullock kissed Scarlett Johansson (front page worthy?-just stop it).  The point is BP wants the general public to forget about this as soon as possible.  I hope we don't.  And I'm going to do my bit to make sure we don't, by spreading a little humor. 

So for your viewing pleasure, here is the Upright Citizen's Brigade take on the oil disaster, courtesy of ucbcomedy.com. I think this is brilliant.