“Why does that guy keep writing about the BP oil spill?” you may rightfully ask.

Well, part of it is certainly the fact that I just had a book come out about the subject, and am therefore required by law to keep on topic.

But there’s another reason, too. After several months of studying the spill, I realized that I was also studying the way we tell our national stories. The way we the people, or at least we the press, seem to suffer from an advanced case of A.D.D., the way the spill was EVERYTHING for a while before we skipped on to tsunamis and Tea Parties. The way this short attention span leads us to over-dramatize a subject while it is hot and forget about it when it’s not. And, perhaps most importantly, what this says about what those who run the media think of their audience, the way they underestimate us and treat us like candy-craving children.

Personally, I don’t really think we are that dumb. Certainly the people I met on my travels through the Gulf were not. I remember the one time I watched the national news with some locals, how we rolled oureyes and laughed at the way they made it all seem like an adventure story out of an action film.

So maybe that’s another reason I haven’t “moved on.” Maybe that’s why I’ve stubbornly stuck with this story, believing that there is still a deeper, longer story to be told.

That said, you may still be sick of my writing about it. So here’s a movie where I talk about it instead: