Joe Barton Apologizes
In a sane world, this is the sort of thing that would sink a national party and ruin its chances in the upcoming midterm elections. In our world, it’s just hilarious. Republican Congressman Joe Barton has publicly apologized. To British Petroleum. Really:
I’m speaking totally for myself and I’m not speaking for the Republican Party and I’m not speaking for anybody in the House of Representatives but myself, but I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday. I think it’s a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown. In this case, a $20 billion shakedown with the Attorney General of the United States…
So, the tragedy here is not the lives lost, the destruction of an ecosystem, the lasting damage whose extent we can only guess at. No, the tragedy is that the executives of a private corporation was treated like criminals. For a crime. Which they committed.
Luckily, an appropriate response has been made, in the form of one of those websites with the long names that displays random one-liners every time you reload the page. Some gems:
Joe Barton would like to apologize to:
- The Catholic Church for our soft tender boys turning into bitter ungrateful adults.
- Michael Vick, because seriously, if the good lord didn’t want dogs to fight, he wouldn’t have given them teeth. and if he didn’t want them to be soaked in gasoline and burned to death, why would he have made them so flammable?
- BP, for soaking up all your valuable oil with our worthless pelicans.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking there’s nothing funny about an ecological disaster of this magnitude, an ecological disaster which is still happening as we speak. I agree, this stopped being funny a long time ago. So why can’t I stop laughing?
Thu., Jun. 17, 2010
Reader Comments (1)
I can't understand how the GOP can continue to exist, no, thrive. I should have seen it coming. When the nation stood behind Reagan after he sold weapons to Iran in secret to fund an illegal activity, I should have taken my family and moved to Italy. Or somewhere. Now we're standing behind the fucking monsters who want to watch us die. Whatever.