Like stopped clocks narcissists can be guaranteed
to get something right at least once: witness
re-naming the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf
of America – as the Romans named
the entire Mediterranean,
from Massilia to Carthage,
Levant to the Pillars of Hercules,
‘Mare Nostrum’. Even that advocate
of the USA’s imperial
expansion, and subjugation of Stone Age
peoples, President Thomas Jefferson –
slave owner, miscegenator, gardener,
and one of the Founding Fathers – accepted,
without demur, the 1550 map
that named the gulf El Golfo de México.
It might, after all, have been named for Cuba,
that elongated island – which Jefferson
coveted – that lies like a detached tongue
in the Gulf’s gigantic now poisonous maw.
The largest river that flows into the Gulf
is the Mississippi. The ninety miles
from the mouth to Baton Rouge is known as
‘Cancer Alley’, and comprises mostly
poor, black parishes. Oil refineries
and petrochemical works discharge
their liquid waste containing PCBs,
dioxins, lead, mercury and phosphorus
into The Big Muddy, which then informs
the Gulf’s warming waters, steeped in oil
from the flotillas of drilling platforms –
mostly American – that float like scum.
Most marine species are dying, except for
oil-marinated Yellow-Fin Tuna
caught by trawlers out of Galveston, shipped
to US canneries and restaurants –
like old Saturn eating his children. So,
quite right and proper that the Union’s
47th President should fess up
and give the crime scene a fitting name.
By David Selzer