By Wayne Dawkins
 
Speaking of BP, I read a toxic editorial in the Daily Press of Newport News, my local newspaper. The editorial says President Obama is bullying the oil giant and, worse, is stoking the belief that all corporations are evil.
 
The newspaper editorial board must have temporary amnesia. Some companies – including BP – have been breathtakingly greedy and reckless lately. BP [British Petroleum, a 40-percent British, 39-percent American owned multinational] is responsible for the deaths of 11 workers who were probably killed because of ignored safety rules.
 
As the desperate cleanup efforts wear on, attentive consumers are learning that BP has repeatedly downplayed the enormity of the environmental harm the company unleashed.
 
No, BP did not act with “malice,” a bizarre word choice from that editorial. Why would an oil giant want to kill itself? What happened instead was the corporation behaved recklessly and greedily, and now risks undermining the enterprise. Witness the stock price that is plunging like flushed waste.
 
Obama is not bullying BP. At best he is a scold.
 
So he tweaked BP for rolling out an upbeat TV advertising campaign. That’s a corporation’s right to present a positive image. However the reality is the oil company is spinning Gulf Coast inhabitants and the American people at large with rosy reports. The cap that was placed on the underwater gusher is not recovering as much oil as BP suggested.
 
Obama is going to have oily residue on his body politic for a long time. The encroachment of big government that the local editorialists fear is not going to happen. BP’s bad behavior was enabled by woefully inadequate government regulation. The president now has to stand back helplessly and watch this slow-motion catastrophe. BP is in charge of the cleanup with minimal supervision from the U.S. Coast Guard.
 
Because the deadly explosion then gusher was a man-made act, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida are not eligible for disaster relief. The colossal mess was not the result of an “act of God” such as a hurricane or earthquake. BP therefore is in charge of cleaning up the mess.
 
If anything, desperate fishermen and vacation season businesspeople fault the president for not expressing enough rage toward BP. Like a humorist on NPR’s “Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me” joked last week, Obama essentially shook his head in disgust, like the old-school patriarch who is profoundly disappointed in his child.
 
So the president’s mild rebuke of BP has me perplexed by the Daily Press editorial board fear of presidential big-business bashing. I just don’t see it.