{"id":1888,"date":"2010-05-27T16:59:23","date_gmt":"2010-05-27T21:59:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlwpen.com\/?p=1888"},"modified":"2010-05-27T16:59:23","modified_gmt":"2010-05-27T21:59:23","slug":"bedside-manners-bp-american-pimp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2010\/05\/27\/bedside-manners-bp-american-pimp\/","title":{"rendered":"BEDSIDE MANNERS: BP, American Pimp"},"content":{"rendered":"

Health posts are my thing, and today I cannot stop thinking about the health of the Gulf Coast…which clearly impacts the health of more living creatures than we can fathom.\u00a0 News coverage may talk about bodies of water like they are distinct things, but ‘the Gulf’ is merely\u00a0a cartographer’s distinction.\u00a0 It’s hard to watch the live feed<\/a> of the endless spray of oil shooting into the ocean.\u00a0 It feels like watching a massacre, like a spray of machine-gun bullets ending life after life.\u00a0 Calling this catastrophe a “spill” is like calling an amputation a “boo-boo.”\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And, frankly, I can think of nothing more important to write about for this month’s column.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0\"File:Oil-spill.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

So, allow me to compare our planet to a patient, a very ill patient who has suffered a severe injury and is receiving really crappy medical care.<\/a>\u00a0 Or, let’s take it to a more intimate-level: we can anthropomorphize one affected area, the Mississippi Spillway, as\u00a0the\u00a0vulva of the U.S. \u00a0One of my favorite sociologist bloggers, Mimi Schippers<\/a>, Ph.D.\u00a0(a.k.a. Marx in Drag<\/a>), did just that in a post<\/a> where she\u00a0calls British Petroleum (BP)\u00a0a pimp<\/strong> — and not\u00a0the MTV\/”pimp my ride”\/bling-bling\/Snoop Dogg kind of pimp.\u00a0 No, we’re talking a stone cold, cruel, exploitative, abusive,\u00a0criminal.\u00a0 In the words of Dr. Schippers:<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0BP and the rest of the oil industry are the johns and the federal government is the pimp.\u00a0 Federal, state, and local politicians pimp us out to put money and power in their own pockets while, by paying the right price, Big Oil gets to take what it wants and needs.\u00a0 And they-the pimp and the johns, do so with absolutely no regard for the needs or well-being of the body they use.\u00a0 The body\u2014the living environment, including the people\u2014is, however, a breathing entity.\u00a0 And though it appears as if it is just an object to be used, the people know what they are doing.\u00a0 They strike a bargain that, for the moment, benefits themselves but sacrifices the rest.\u00a0 You give me jobs, and I\u2019ll give you whatever you want.\u00a0\u00a0Invoking the vulva as metaphor suggests there is something feminine or female about this place and that masculine or male power is the problem.\u00a0 But don\u2019t let that confuse the issue.\u00a0 This is about class and economics.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Whether you prefer to see the U.S. government as an incompetent physician (allowing a patient to\u00a0inch towards death)\u00a0or as a\u00a0corrupt police officer (being too kind to a felon), we have got to ramp up our demands for swift, safe, effective\u00a0action.\u00a0 And, perhaps, we need to think seriously about how to safely shut-down all of the deep-water drilling before the next tragedy.\u00a0 All the money in the world cannot buy <\/em>a healthy ocean.\u00a0 Even if this torrent of BP oil is the last one we ever have to deal with, don’t think that we’re close to knowing how bad things really are..in the words of that\u00a070’s BTO classic:<\/p>\n

Here’s somethin’ that you’re never gonna forget. B-, b-, b-, baby, you just ain’t seen na, na, nothin’ yet!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Health posts are my thing, and today I cannot stop thinking about the health of the Gulf Coast…which clearly impacts the health of more living creatures than we can fathom.\u00a0 News coverage may talk about bodies of water like they are distinct things, but ‘the Gulf’ is merely\u00a0a cartographer’s distinction.\u00a0 It’s hard to watch the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1918,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21094],"tags":[4591,21220,39,33,21602,4588,85,9084,665],"class_list":["post-1888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bedside-manners","tag-bp","tag-british-petroleum","tag-ethics","tag-health","tag-mimi-schippers","tag-oil-spill","tag-politics","tag-public-policy","tag-science"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1918"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}