Crude comedy

Plugging the oil spill off the coast of Louisiana with old golf balls seems about as harebrained a scheme as the earlier move to mop up the widening crude oil slick with pads made of used nylon stockings stuffed with remains of hair donated from barbershops all over the US. The inescapable image is that of an inept plumber struggling with a leaking drainpipe with a bag of makeshift tools. Milling around him are the harried houseowner — Governor Bobby Jindal, metaphorically speaking — and a host of equally anguished neighbours whose own backyards are threatened. Ideally speaking, it is the plumber's job to know what to do with leaking pipes; but weeks of British Petroleum's bungled attempts to plug the deep-sea crude leakage have effectively disproved that comforting belief.

Trying to plug a leak with gobs of sticky junk or a giant screw-cap at depths where the water pressure is a ton per square inch, smacks more of slapstick comedy than a disaster slick, er, flick. A company and a country pushing the boundaries of science should logically have a Plan B but in this case, it is more like they are literally flailing about in the dark — as is wont when the disaster area is inky black even without 15,000 barrels of crude clouding the waters. No wonder both the oil company, and ‘No Drama Obama' are slipping down the popularity ratings.

Arguably, blaming President Obama is like pillorying the mayor of the metaphorical town that has to deal with the bumbling plumber — he has no real jurisdiction to muscle in on a private mishap. But even a mayor would be taken to task for revealing in a press conference that his 11-year-old daughter's question, “Daddy have you plugged that leak yet?” was what brought home the enormity of the disaster. If only the solution was as simple as the child's query.