Livin' on a prayer

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Sorry, Louisiana legislators, but it's going to take an awful lot more than prayer to fix the oil spill. You know, it's going to take something, well, real.

Given the enormity of the disaster, though, and the sense of helplessness you must all feel, I suppose many of you thought it couldn't hurt:

State senators designated Sunday as a day for citizens to ask for God's help dealing with the oil disaster.

"Thus far efforts made by mortals to try to solve the crisis have been to no avail," state Sen. Robert Adley said in a statement released after last week's unanimous vote for the day of prayer. "It is clearly time for a miracle for us."

The resolution names Sunday as a statewide day of prayer in Louisiana and calls on people of all religions throughout the Gulf Coast "to pray for an end to this environmental emergency, sparing us all from the destruction of both culture and livelihood."

I suppose you could instead have asked your God why he allowed the disaster to happen in the first place, if you think he's so omnipotent, but let's not delve too deeply into your superstitions.

What you might want to do, if you actually want to deal with reality, is look into why the disaster happened, and that would mean looking into a culture that many of you enabled, if only through ignorance, a culture of corporate deregulation and environmental pillage, a culture of greed and profit, a shameful culture of utter irresponsibility. Sure, some of you didn't know what was going on, but I suspect that some of you did, and that many of you didn't really give a shit until all that oil started pouring out of the leak, killing wildlife, and destroying so much of the way of life of the people of your state.

It's a massive wake-up call, to be sure. And prayer ain't the answer.