In an attempt to contain the PR damage from the Gulf oil spill, British Petroleum has hired as their new head of U.S. PR the former campaign press secretary for Dick Cheney. No, I'm not making this up.
British Petroleum has apparently decided that the Cheney brand of PR and brand marketing is just what the company needs right now:
BP, struggling to maintain its image while taking responsibility for the worst oil disaster in U.S. history, has hired someone new to head its American public relations operation: Anne Womack-Kolton, the former campaign press secretary for Vice President Dick Cheney.
Womack-Kolton ran Cheney's press shop during the 2004 campaign, and worked as an assistant press secretary in 2000. She was also an assistant in the White House press office.
She begins today, the BP press office tells TPM.
I think we should thank BP for making even clearer the link between the secret Cheney energy task force and the expansion of offshore drilling that has brought us the present catastrophe. It's been discouraging to see the media focus entirely on the perceived failings of the Obama administration on this one - and there certainly have been failings, most notably the wholehearted embrace of deep water offshore drilling only weeks before the disaster. But the root of this crisis is the corrupt, secretive Bush-Cheney energy policies that used the Department of Interior as a casino to pay out rigged jackpots to their energy company cronies. The corruption is clearly still embedded in that department.
What is amazing is the sheer boldness and transparency of this latest BP move. It's as if they are drawing the dots and daring the media to connect them.