“My initial motive was just to mock them. It wasn’t something I’d been planning. I was home sick from work, perusing the news, and I honestly started it on a whim. One morning, on May 19, I saw a video on Huffington Post where a CBS reporter was told by the U.S. Coast Guard that if they didn’t get off the beach they’d be arrested. When the reporter asked how the Coast Guard could do that on a public beach, they responded, “it’s BP’s rules.” It was very obvious to me BP was more worried about its image than about actually letting people see and understand what was happening on the Gulf. I was literally taking a whiz when I had this idea: How could I be BP’s public relations team on Twitter?” —Los Angeles–based comedian Josh Simpson, who has outed himself as the man behind the parody @BPGlobalPR Twitter account, on why he started it. [Awl]
