(Ballet at Sea 2.0, from the show, after the jump).
BP's press machine just doesn't know when to stop.
We'd already been having fun with a "story" by one of the pseudo "BP reporters" for a days now. "Ballet at Sea," written by Paula Kolmar, has now been made immortal thanks to a dramatic, verbatim reading by TRMS executive producer Bill Wolff and the visual genius of producer Mirjam Lablans. Check out the video and send it to your friends.
But there's more! Three days after taking in the ballet at sea, Paula Kolmar filed another story for BP, "Burning the Candle," in which she expressed some unholy mix of pity and admiration for the BP responders working 16 hours a day to fix the Deepwater Horizon disaster. They'd darned well better get in there and burn the candle. They just wrecked the Gulf of Mexico! Now they're heroes for giving up their weekends?
Seriously, it makes me want to jump and down with outrage -- what's the right response to this myopic propaganda nonsense B.S.? Like this:
What makes a person work 12, 14, often 16 hours a day on the oil spill? What drives a person to willingly give up weekends and holidays week after week for this incident? I see it every day among BP people, contractors and agency representatives.
Some are working in the offices of the Unified Command Centre typing away at laptops or updating planning and schedules or solving internet, printer and phone issues. Others are in the field, on the frontline during the long hot, humid daylight hours and into the night.
Full jaw-dropping text after the jump.
"Burning the Candle" by BP "reporter" Paula Kolmar:
What makes a person work 12, 14, often 16 hours a day on the oil spill? What drives a person to willingly give up weekends and holidays week after week for this incident? I see it every day among BP people, contractors and agency representatives
Some are working in the offices of the Unified Command Centre typing away at laptops or updating planning and schedules or solving internet, printer and phone issues. Others are in the field, on the frontline during the long hot, humid daylight hours and into the night.
For the last several weeks I've asked myself: what is the trigger that generates such drive and energy? It's so prevalent, so common, that it is a normal day in the life of an incident responder. It's not required really, or expected, but it happens nonetheless!
I have an insight now that is so beautifully human it reminds me of the strong threads that make the fabric of people. Just under the surface when things are going family well, but tested in times of great need, when friends and colleagues, even complete strangers, rely on you to be around to do what must be done.
Jon, a frontline responder working in Louisiana and based at the Toledo refinery in his 'day job' gave me the answer that rings true: he wants to make a difference during his call-to-duty. Individually, we want to play our role, whatever that may be, and make a difference, leaving the situation a bit better off when we leave. That is on top of knowing almost certainly that the phone will ring again in a few weeks to return to the fight.
As amazing are the people that are supporting these responders and filling the gap made by a 14 day absence from their real job. Regular work hasn't stopped because of the oil spill and the oil spill hasn't yielded either. A whole army of colleagues are picking up the slack and covering the work that also must be carried out at home base.
One person hoping to make just a little difference in this incident multiplied by over 20,000 individuals is a powerful engine. A small, but very human wish, to count for something is motivating people to work at a pace with a focus and purpose.
With those kind of people facing this battle by playing their part, I can see clearly now the answer has alluded me. People have made the choice - failure is not on the list of options. Period.
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Leave a Comment:
Not only Ms. Kolmar a propagandist, she also doesn't know the difference between "alluded" and "eluded." If you're going to set yourself up as a fake journalist, at least be a LITERATE one.
Ha! Good catch there. Maybe she just got dizzy from spewing out of these mind-numbing cliches so quickly and couldn't keep her homophones straight there at the end. Or maybe she really meant the "answer" was referring to her person. I don't know! The woman is positively Goebbels-esque. I won't put anything past her.
Good grammar seems to allude her.
This is a new policy at BP, right?
Grrl, they're LYING. AGAIN. At least this past weekend, all the clean-up workers we saw were off at 5. Additionally, they work 20 minutes and then are off for 40 (which is somewhat understandable, given the heat!)
Grrr.
"Ballet at Sea" is brilliant! It's BP's Theater of the Absurd grace a TRMS--want more!
Bravo...you've finally passed the lesson of the Gom J'Bar
You are human not animal.
We don't do this for gratitude, my friend, but for the future of the human race. - Vorian Atredies DUNE
Bob
MyCommonSensePolitics
http://mycommonsensepolitics.net/
Want to hear another joke?
In my half awake, half asleep moment of creativity, probably the same way those "journalists" work, I made myself laugh with a joke told to me by my inner comic:
What makes a human being transform into a Paula Kolmar?
Loads and loads of money. Enough money to not care about having a soul.
[Duplicate. Ignore.]
Overtime pay plus BP's failure to hire enough people to clean up the spill on normal 8 hour shifts, that's what.
Why is BP in charge of this cleanup? It's like putting the Mafia in charge of crime fighting.
The oil volcano is far worse than you could ever imagine. Go to
www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?noframes;read=175306
This news is horrible
The oil volcano is far worse than you could ever imagine. Go to
www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?noframes;read=175306
This news is horrible!!!!!!
I'm not an "educated" man by any means, but I can assure you that there isn't a smart enough person on this Planet to convert me into feeling sorry for BP.
-RBJ
I suppose we have some journalism teacher to blame for helping to create a writer who thinks that any metaphor is a good metaphor. Sick. Reminds me more of a ballet in hell.
since this propagandist Paula Kolmar loves words so much, perhaps we could send her some of ours.
Here is a link to how to contact BP: http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9021231&contentId=7039279
or this one:
http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9033574&contentId=7061709
Unbelievable! I thought that it was a joke at first, I swear. Then it went on and on, and I knew that they were telling us that the sky is black. No, it isn't, but the water is, Numbskull Kolmar and your cohorts! Yes, we do know better about a lot of things. BP's crimes against humanity are among the things we regular people DO know so stop spending your 'ballet' money. You will need it to help the families, whose lives you have ruined!
Well, at least the captains and crews of the boats are getting some credit for what they are doing. Synchronized steaming in current and wind is no easy task, especially when more than two craft are involved. Dragging a heavy boom around makes it an order of magnitude more difficult. I have spent some time working commercial craft such as these and know first hand how difficult this coordination is. The tough men on these boats deserve credit for the tough job they are doing. The fact that the overall effort is a failure is not their fault. The problem is BPs lack of coordination of the available resources, not the ability of these mariners.
Thanks for weighing in. It's good to have the perspective of someone with experience on big boats like this.
Here's another typo form Kolmar:
I call it 'chasing tar balls' but the environmental team here in the Mobile Command Center don't call it anything - if the reports are sound then they deploy SCAT to handle it.
CORRECTION:
...the environmental TEAM here in the Mobile Command Center DOESN'T...
From BP's own page:
http://www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?categoryId=9033611&contentId=7062482
Presumably BP engaged its 'reporters' (freelancers? / PR 'consultants'?) to write 'good news' stories about the Gulf disaster to garner goodwill among local residents and the wider (inter)national community – and NOT to be ridiculed on TRMS.
It would therefore be really interesting to hear whether ANY media outlet has picked up and run with their copy. (I can't imagine!). Perhaps your researchers could find out which print/online/broadcast media, if any, have carried BP's shameless copy. AND if any have – who owns them…
As a prior CEO of a (UK!) PR agency (nevertheless still a US citizen), I know how a client can try to coerce a PR agency to engage in scurrilous and misleading misinformation. Any reputable, respectable agency would refuse to do so – even to the point of forgoing valuable fee income and the risk of losing a client. Equally, any credible agency would have aired with the client the 'embarrassment value' of engaging in such a campaign and (hopefully) would have convinced the client (here, BP) that such whitewashing efforts would be obviously counterproductive. Who are these 'journalists' working for?