Real Texts, Pg 55

Johnathon Owen

Dr. Hill Taylor

ENG 101

February 1^st, 2012

Real Texts Reading Response #2, Pg. 56

     In President Obama’s Remarks after a briefing on the BP Oil spill, the President was able to effectively establish an apologetic relationship with his audience by reassuring them that all possible efforts were being made by the government and BP Oil to contain the well leak and clean up the Gulf. His response also projected the blame away from the government through use of sobering examples and facts. However, if the circumstance would have been slightly different, President Obama could have delivered a drastically different speech. In this hypothetical speech, imagine that Obama was making a public apology to the Gulf community for slow action taken by the government to control the oil spill. This apology would affect different audience members in completely different ways.

     The most affected audience members would be the residents of the coastal gulf region. The President would be most likely making this apology directly to these citizens. Regardless of how sincere this apology would be, it would still not be enough to ease the pain that these citizens had endured before the apology. With that being said, one can now analyze the effects of the new apology on the audience who was not in immediate location of the oil spill.

     Democratic politicians who were seeking reelection would have experienced adverse effects from the delayed apology. The delayed response from both the federal and state governments, followed by a delayed apology would have had a strong effect on the voting population. Already angered by their devastating situation, the delayed action would have led to more environmental

Owen 2

injury, and possibly human death. Most likely, the democratic officials who were in office at that time would not be reelected. This apology would simply be too little, too late.

     On the contrary, the President’s late response to the crisis would have had a positive effect on BP Oil executives. Following the spill, several of these officials were fired, or were pressured to resigned. Had Obama delivered this speech later than he did, BP could have taken advantage of the government while it was in an apologetic state, giving these executives more time to fix the issue, and potentially keep their jobs. Also, BP could have avoided such a large public relations effort had Obama delivered the hypothetical speech. Granted, BP would still be responsible for oil clean up and paying damages to Gulf residents, but they could have been able to project the blame off themselves and on the government just enough to avoid being boycotted and hated by the nation.

     The late action by the government would possess negative consequences for the engineers who were tasked with cleaning up the spill. The government’s late reaction to the crisis would in turn lead to extremely delayed action by the engineers. The time the government wasted on making the Gulf tragedy a political issue may have been enough time to push the environment past its breaking point. If this would have happened, it could have been almost impossible for the engineers to solve the problem. The engineers who would have been tasked after the delayed apology would hold no responsibility if the environment failed because of being neglected for so long.

     In all actuality, President Obama did a fairly good job at addressing the public when he did. Sooner would have been better, but any later would have held adverse repercussions for most

Owen 3

audience members. Regardless of when the apology was issued, the Gulf environment and its inhabitants still had to deal with one of the largest crisis’s their area had ever seen. The ones at fault have paid the price, and hopefully the gulf area will be able to fully recover.