The PR ad they ran during the NBC Nightly News tonight was pretty disgusting too. I was in the kitchen but I heard the audio and was nauseated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LklqCy_bpuY

If he's telling the truth, I will be the next pope.

Smart move on their point and I really doubt any kind of backlash from doing it. From a personal point of view it's disgusting.

BP and other large corporations have done this already, for years.

Many large corporations also employ professional "commenters" to patrol web sites and post canned (positive) comments and responses about the company. Also in place for many years.

In fact, there are entire web sites functioning as "dummy" fronts for managing corporate propoganda.

And that's just the visible tip of the iceberg.

Did you folks not know this? You've likely been victim to this yourself. Given how prevalent and overt it is, it's quite likely that hired commenters have frequently posted *here*, on bojack.org.

ecohuman,

The practice of buying search terms in and of itself as advertising is fine.

What's obscene about BP is that their spending a penny on advertising at all. Makes a stronger case for the government taking every penny from them they can ASAP before they waste it all.

What's obscene about BP is that their spending a penny on advertising at all. Makes a stronger case for the government taking every penny from them they can ASAP before they waste it all.

"waste it all?" Why is that obscene?

If we keep buying the gas, they should be able to do whatever they want with "their" money. Same for any company.
Yes, BP screwed up. But I dont remember people screaming that we needed to take over Exxon. (Might have been too young to remember though...)

Should the government take over Microsoft because their crappy software allows virii on our computers?

Or maybe Apple because people who work for them are committing suicide?

This whole "government should take them over" mentality is frankly starting to scare me. We have enough problems getting government to do what they are supposed to be doing.

Jon:

Government shouldn't take them over, but they are using money for their PR band-aid and will probably be fighting any assessed punitive/environmental costs in courts for some years to come. Lawyers will be deciding this case considering the 75 mil. economic damages cap in place to protect them.

It's very disingenuous.

I will give credit to BP for not backing down right now and saying they aren't going to be making out payments in full, but that will probably change once they are handed the invoice for their mess.

BP should fix the Gulf first and then worry about fixing their image.

I also dont get why gas prices arent skyrocketing since this happened. They have actually gone down of late.
If there was ANY kind of problem with oil production in the past, gas prices would go up like crazy.
There's something fishy going on....

Jon:

The US produces such a tiny percentage of the world's crude. Crude is priced on the global market. That's why this whole exploitation of our own resources as some savior to our energy problems is a big joke. It's not a wrong thing to do necessarily in terms of job creation, but it's not going to save us from going into dangerous places considering our entire world's economy is based off of this type of energy source.

The cream of the crop for oil is still in the Middle East and with unstable countries. Any oil drilled in the US doesn't necessarily stay in the US. Think globally.