Dead humpback found on bow of Exxon tanker
Honestly, people. You can't make this stuff up.
An ExxonMobil oil tanker arrived in the port of Valdez (yes, the site of the Exxon-valdez oil spill) with a dead humpback whale stuck on its bow that (really, I'm not making this up) nobody noticed until the tanker got into port.
Now, let's put our conventional journalism hats on -- for just a moment -- and look at how Exxon tried to duck this rather sensitive news item.
I went to our top Conventional Old Media guy with this news item to get his take. If you picture J. Jonah Jameson, Spiderman's editor, you'd be fairly close to our Chief Editor, at least in disposition. Grumpy. Impatient. Blunt. (Occupational hazard among chief editors, actually) But give him curly hair, lose the cigar, throw in a Scottish burr, and you get the picture.
Now Mike is not only an expert at getting quoted in the media, he's also really, really good at NOT getting quoted on subjects he wants to avoid. At those moments, he is a master at being so boring, convoluted, and opaque that what he says will never, ever appear in print.
So he says he knows what Exxon spokesperson Ray Botto was trying to do when he said
'There's been no factual evidence brought forth that associates the vessel with the demise of the whale.'
Whoops. His mistake, according to Mike: he tripped into being funny, and so is being widely quoted.
Ok, journalism hats off, whale activist hats on.
The fact is, Mr. Botto, whether that whale was one of the 300,000 cetaceans that die every year from accidents involving ship-strikes or net entanglements, there actually is evidence associating the contents of your vessel and the potential demise of many whales.
Global warming is threatening to change migration patterns and destroy the krill population upon which so many whales depend.
That oil tanker may not have intended to kill that whale, but the global warming it's fueling is one gigantic harpoon, aimed at every humpback's head.
So please, if anybody actually got a picture of that whale dead on the bow of an Exxon oil tanker, do sent it along. It speaks volumes.
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Comments
it's our fault, we still use our f*** car !
Posted by: LGV | June 5, 2009 1:21 PM
awesome! funny as, really.
Posted by: Florian | June 5, 2009 2:07 PM
When are big companies like exxon going to learn to admit when they have done something terribly wrong?Oh, and investing a bit more of their money in solar and wind energy would be nice too :)
Posted by: Lauren | June 5, 2009 7:03 PM
Wow. What a suprise it comes to Exxon once again. One of the largest destructors of the world we live in. I didn't think it was possible to create that amount of carnage and still be...alive. Why do they get away with it? What can be done? I know on my behalf I have sent letters to Exxon. A futile action, since they are filled with nothing but arrogance and greed. Really, there are no words to describe their blind annihilation towards the Earth.
Posted by: Twyla | June 5, 2009 10:15 PM
Love the description of Mike. Did he read that?
Posted by: Juliette | June 8, 2009 10:07 AM
Dam those snake oil salesman, they can slip in to a lie like a warm bath
Posted by: bruce | July 19, 2009 10:15 AM