Spike Lee Blasts President Obama's Mishandling of the BP Gulf Oil Spill

Spike Lee blasts President Obama over his mishandling of the BP Gulf oil spill and blames the response time on environmental racism.

Spike Lee is taking President Barack Obama to task once more for his handling of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

"I don't know why Obama ever trusted these BP guys! They would lie to their mothers," Lee opines to GQ's Mark Healy. "[Former BP president Tony] Hayward does not give a [bleep]. The thing we don't talk about is that 11 Americans lost their lives and it took seven weeks to invite their families to the White House. I'm not trying to bash my man, but that's a long time."

Lee also blamed "environmental racism" for the slow response: "If this oil spill would have reached the Hamptons, Martha's Vineyard [where Spike summers], Cape Cod, that [bleep] would have been fixed." Source

I have long maintained that you can't send the fox to guard the hen house. President Obama seemed to take BP at its word in the early stages and continued to do so until the public outrage became too loud for him. BP did what was in BP's interest and looked out for its bottom-line. Spike Lee is correct in saying that had the spill reached Martha's Vineyard or the Hamptons, the response time would have been vastly different.