Easily the dumbest damned remark...

... of the week. From Fareed Zakaria of CNN, on the bashing of oil execs: "'Not so fast,' says Fareed. In this week's Fareed's Take, he says we shouldn't vilify oil...because it isn't going anywhere."

Uh, pardon me? We shouldn't excoriate the executives of BP for their obvious gross negligence and their attempts to paste a smiley face over their fuck-ups just because we live in a society that the oil companies consciously shaped to create a dependency on their product?

If I need oil (and I'm doing what I can to require less), that need won't change whether I love the oil fatcats or not, and the oil companies know that, and they frankly don't give a fuck as long as their profits continue to rise.

More to the point, healthy anger over the extraordinary negligence of BP (as well as its continuing attempts to hide the truth about the damage it's caused) will help further the education of the public in the need to make a transition from oil to more sustainable sources of energy, which is probably what really bothers Zakaria.

What Zakaria is saying, in effect, is: "It's not nice to make fun of giant multinational corporations because we depend upon them," and that's just another way of saying that these frigging monsters deserve our respect.

It's a very, very good thing that Zakaria isn't counseling battered women.