Liberals are scoffing at oilfield service company Baker Hughes for painting their drill bits pink in solidarity with the Susan G. Komen breast cancer awareness campaigns. The company also donated $100,000 for the second year in a row. But in the mind of a progressive, that doesn't matter because the company uses fracking.
Mic.com called this pairing "The Worst Campaign for Breast Cancer Awareness Yet." Sophie Kleeman wrote, "Fracking and breast cancer awareness go together like, well, oil and water." She labeled the company's slogan, "Doing our Bit for the Cure," as "hokey" and called the pink drill bits "ridiculous."
Lindsay Abrams, writing for Salon.com, jumped all over Baker Hughes accusing them of taking "pinkwashing" to a "new low." ("Pinkwashing" is a label placed on companies that support Komen's breast cancer awareness campaign, but make or sell products that may be linked to causing cancer.) Abrams wrote: "[D]rill bits are used, of course, to drill oil and natural gas wells, some of which are later exploited using hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. We don’t know a lot about the health risks of fracking."
New York magazine said, "You can't make this sh*t up." Writer Jessica Roy dubbed the pink drills "the most egregious example of pink-washing we've ever seen" because the drill bits will be used for fracking and that "has some serious links to cancer itself." "Sugarcoat your image all you want, but pink drill bits are still drill bits," says Roy.
EcoWatch made light of the serious effort of Baker Hughes calling their pink drill bits a "phallic cyborg" and "a sex toy from hell."
Even Sarah Silverman got in a jab via Twitter questioning the logic behind a fracking drill for breast cancer, hash-tagging it #NotTheOnion:
According to FuelFix.com, in addition to the $100,000 donation, Baker Hughes have painted 1,000 of their drill bits and will distribute them to job sites throughout October inside pink-topped containers that will be stuffed with informative packets containing breast health facts, cancer risk factors, and how to get screened. The company hopes that the "roughnecks" who open the containers can learn something about the disease and pass along the information. Baker Hughes spokesman Bill Debo said:
Our hope is from the water cooler to the rig site to the coffee shop to everywhere, someone gets this information to their spouses, their girlfriends, their daughters so we can create awareness and end this disease forever.
Debo takes his company's support of finding a cure quite seriously, explaining that his own mother fell victim to breast cancer when he was just 17 years old.
