BP Busing and Scam Photo Ops

REUTERS/Sean Gardner - Grand Isle, Louisiana Monday, May 31, 2010. (Memorial Day)

REUTERS/Lee Celano - Grand Isle, Louisiana. Sunday, May 30, 2010.

I’d say the post by MataHarley yesterday at Flopping Aces, a right-wing blog, was pretty courageous.  Titled “BP Busing & Scam Photo Ops… the scandal that wasn’t,“ the author rips both the left and right for accusing Obama of staging last Friday’s photo op on the beach in Grand Isle in Jefferson Parish.

What both sides have jumped on are charges by a councilman, amplified in the local media, that the Administration bused in 400 unskilled workers who were essentially paid off for the day to create a false backdrop.  Attacking both sides for lazy research and hit-and-run journalism, MataHarley accuses the left of using the charge “to further bash the image of BP, and by proxy, big oil, for their green agenda,” and the “right [for using] it to slyly suggest it was Obama, himself, orchestrating the scam.”

You can and should read the whole post, but what naturally caught my attention was the visual angle. Besides MataHarley’s clarification that the workers were already mandated and trained to perform the work, it’s pointed out that colored shirts worn by some of the workers denoted and verified a work heirarchy established by the program in place and, further, that the HAZMAT suits reflected that many workers, far from being plucked off the street, had participated in specific hazardous training and certification courses.

But then, plain and simple are the newswire photos above taken in the same location of Obama’s visit two and three days later, respectively.  Obviously, someone forgot to tell the posers that — with the President having taken off and the payoff money in their pockets — they were free to go home.