As soon as I heard the words come off the lips of the Swedish Chairman of BP, I knew there would be a … firestorm of blog and cable news activity and coverage. Essentially what the poor man said was, “We care about the small people.”  Sigh. 

He’d done everything right up until that moment. He’d agreed to the President’s demand that a $20 billion fund be set up outside the management of BP to help those most deeply and immediately in need following the BP-caused devastation in the Gulf of Mexico. He apologized, which in American culture means, he took responsibility and set his company up for more litigation than any coal mine disaster or errant gas pedal might ever produce. But then he said, “We care about the small people.” 

I think he meant to say, “We care about the people affected who operate and work in the thousands of small and family businesses along the Gulf Coast.” But he called them “small people,” and most of them are probably not small, or, for sure, don’t wish to be thought of as small, or little, or any other descriptive that portrays them as anything less than normal, typical, average people. 

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not attempting to wash away any of BP’s responsibility in this awful matter, but we really need to focus on the substance of things and not get all caught up in a misspoken phrase by a man who clearly isn’t fluent in the nuances of the English language. I think he’s doing the right things, but he’s communicating his extremely important messages in the wrong way.   

If we’re to use the experience of the Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound, Alaska twenty-one years ago as any point of reference, we’re going to be living with the effects of the disastrous oil leak in the Gulf for decades. Getting the situations of the people affected repaired, cleaning up the mess, making sure it never happens again and addressing all of the primary, secondary and even tertiary costs involved is difficult enough for the best and the brightest among us. 

We really don’t need to be focusing on a couple of unfortunate words at the expense of the substantive issues involved in the BP affair.