The Aesthetics of Disaster Capitalism

Why does the New York Times's digital masthead graphic of the deadly coronavirus bear such an uncannily perverse resemblance to the BP logo?

New York Times Serene Green Virus

Cheery Major Polluter Logo

If you thought Donald Trump was the only propagandist trying to soft-pedal a major disaster, think again. 

Think back, for example,  to when the Obama administration engaged in its own shameful cover-up of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion for months until underwater footage of gushing oil finally compelled the president to take one of his kids for a quick dip in the Gulf to prove that no disaster is too horrible to abandon our inner Doctor Pangloss.

 Just as BP still tries to portray itself as an environmentally friendly corporate citizen, it seems that the subtle aim of the Times and the ruling class it serves is to quell fears of the deadly virus by painting it in soothing glossy colors. The Gray Lady's pleasant zen-like Mandala is the exact opposite of the microscopic images which more realistically portray Covid-19 as an angry red ball with spikes,or only slightly less alarmingly as a brownish grayish blob festooned with little hairy tentacles.

Scary, Ugly Reality

New York City, the global wealth capital of the world, now threatens to overtake China and Italy as the Covid-19 capital of the world. The governor declared a state of emergency as known cases statewide have spiked to 89 and are exponentially increasing by the day. Since the viral disease is covered by the corporate media as even more of a  deadly threat to Wall Street profits and plutonomic growth than it is to the health of mere mortals, it is incumbent upon the citizens and readers of the Times to panic responsibly. 

Maybe if we meditate upon the Gray Lady's mandala version of a deadly pathogen we will be more apt - if we're in the wealthy minority - to valiantly continue taking in Broadway shows and shopping at Bergdorf-Goodman for the latest in the increasingly rare lines of designer face masks and hand sanitizers.

The Times, liberal science-believing purveyor of propaganda that it is, at least has the decency to place a realistic yet very discreet black border around its mellow yellow/green serene virus illustration. That proves resistance to Donald Trump, who persists in oafishly viewing the pandemic through his terminally cracked rose- colored glasses. His soul brother Rick Santelli even went on TV to suggest that we quickly infect ourselves just to get it over with, as if we were toddlers whose mothers once thought it was as good time as any to expose the kids to chicken pox before they started school to avoid falling behind the rest of the class.

As far as the still-existing, wildly profitable, unaccountable and climate- destroying BP is concerned, it has recently emerged that the effects of the Gulf "spill" are even worse, nearly 10 years later, than we first thought. Satellite imagery had only revealed two thirds of the total damage. In other words, according to a new study, the hundreds of millions of crude extended to a geographical area 30 percent larger than originally reported. 

And the Trump administration continues to drill down both in criminal ignorance and in grossly accelerated off-shore drilling. Unluckily for the current cast of characters occupying the White House, they can't hide sick and dying and dead people as well as the last occupants were able to hide a sick and dying and dead ocean.