When BP CEO Tony Hayward finally faced a congressional committee last month, a lot of folks anxious to see him get grilled were upset when he effectively didn’t say a damn thing.

I, for one, however, was not. After all, only a day after agreeing to set up a $20 billion escrow account, he was merely following James Carville’s advice to “lawyer up, shut up, and write checks.”

That’s exactly what he did. Even though he had been given in advance the questions he was to be asked, he brilliantly avoided pinning any liability on BP or himself. Clearly coached by his lawyers, Americans across the country watched a grown man — the head of one of the largest corporations in the world — essentially tell us the dog ate his homework.

I don’t know if it was just my imagination or the TVs I watched that day, but did Hayward’s face get redder as the questioning wore on? I didn’t know congressional hearing rooms were lit with UV lamps.

Of course, the hearings will likely be remembered more for what a dumbass from Texas said rather than what an insufferable douche from Kent didn’t say. Rep. Joe Barton, a Houston Republican who just so happens to be the greatest benefactor of campaign contributions from the oil and gas lobby in the House of Representatives, actually apologized to Hayward for President Barack Obama’s $20 billion “shakedown” the day before.

After a break for lunch and intense pressure by leading members of his party, the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee issued an apology for his apology to BP, which leads me to wonder if Rep. Barton is a native Texan. I’ve always thought men from the Lone Star State, especially hard-core Republicans, said what they mean and mean what they say. Yet, in the span of just a couple hours, Barton apologized for an apology.

Maybe Barton’s from Minnesota. Garrison Keillor says most Minnesotans are quite apologetic for even the slightest of slights.

Now George W. Bush, he’s a real Texan. In his eight years as president, he never apologized once, and Lord knows he did plenty to be sorry for.

Barton is just the latest member of the Tea Party crowd to come across as a shill for BP. First there was Rand Paul, who said Obama sounded “un-American” for criticizing BP. Then Rep. Michele Bachmann called the $20 billion fund “extortion” and a “redistribution of wealth.” Finally, Barton literally apologized to BP.

You’d think such champions of the “Tea Party” wouldn’t be so damn apologetic to “British” Petroleum.

It seems Barton’s main sticking point about the fund was the fact that Attorney General Eric Holder was present during the negotiations between the White House and BP executives. Barton said it was wrong for Holder to be there while he’s conducting a criminal investigation of BP.

You know what? I really don’t give a rat’s ass that the AG was there. Call it a shakedown, extortion, or Chicago-style politics; it got the job done. Besides, it’s not like asking BP nicely had worked for the prior two months.

Did Holder’s presence offer an incentive for BP to pony up the jack? Maybe, but if it helped keep Gulf Coast residents from having to go through decades of litigation before seeing a dime like the victims of the Exxon Valdez, so be it.

It’s not just folks on the right who’ve been raising my ire lately. There have been quite a few of the liberal ilk that have managed to piss off this South Louisiana kid.

The one who especially got my Tabasco boiling was syndicated columnist Froma Harrop. She recently wrote an article in which she called for the federal government to take over the state and set it up as a protectorate since we obviously can’t take care of ourselves.

Without going into too much depth of her column (to prevent me from suffering a coronary while typing), let’s just say it was so absurdly condescending, many readers actually thought it was an attempt (albeit a lame attempt) at satire. If it was, she insulted me twice: once a Louisianian, and secondly as a satirist.

The problem with determining if being satirical was her aim stems from the fact that Harrop is a stereotypical elitist from New York. It’s hard to clearly communicate satire when your mouth is full of champagne and caviar.

I’m really considering using her name indefinitely as an all-purpose term for bodily functions in future issues of Red Shtick. For example, “I just took a massive Harrop, and I feel great!”

We could also use it in lieu of obscenities. Instead of replacing a letter or two with an em dash like we normally do, the entire term could be replaced by her name. For instance, “What the Harrop were you thinking when you wrote that Harroping article, Froma, you Harroping Harrop? Go Harrop yourself!”

With the Joe Bartons on the right and the Froma Harrops on the left, I’m quickly getting to the point of agreeing with some of my fringe friends who say, “Harrop it! Let’s shut off the spigot and secede.” The rest of the country seemingly wants us to provide them with oil and gas, but they don’t care if we get the same amount of royalties and respect as other states, so why not?

Then again, if we secede, the United States will probably just invade us and take the damn oil anyway. Perhaps we should scrap that whole secession thing.

Instead, maybe we should just fight fire with fire. If the feds and the stop-drilling-at-any-cost folks are hell-bent on enforcing an arbitrary six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling (and in the process killing the remainder of South Louisiana’s already hurting post-oilpocalypse economy), the state should impose an equally arbitrary and scientifically unfounded moratorium on interstate transport of oil and gas.

High-pressure pipelines and speeding 18-wheelers carrying highly explosive and toxic hydrocarbons across the country sounds rather dangerous to me. We should shut that down until further notice to allow a panel to review procedures and regulations.

Of course, with everything going on in the gulf and along the shores, we wouldn’t be able to get to it right away. Maybe the panel could convene once the oil threat is gone. Who knows, they might be able to issue their findings and allow resumption of petroleum transports to the northeast by the spring. Instead of oil and gas, we’d send thoughts and prayers to help them stay warm through the winter.

That idea may seem silly, but is it any sillier than many of the ideas proposed by countless people regarding plugging the still-gushing well? I think not.

The most idiotic of sincerely offered fixes I’ve heard yet has to be the “giant boulder” solution, which was put forth by a caller to NPR’s “Talk of the Nation.” At the risk of alienating my Yankee friends, this wunderkind was obviously one of them. He sounded like Family Guy’s Mort Goldman.

Claiming he had been championing the solution for weeks, the caller suggested we should just drop a huge boulder on the gushing well. After all, there had to be a boulder somewhere on the planet big enough to plug it tight. So much for the assumption that only smart people listen to public radio.

While I’m on the subject of suggestions regarding the oil disaster, I’ve got a few more. After hearing the asinine boulder idea, I feel emboldened to do so.

Firstly, I think organizers of the Bacchus Mardi Gras parade should make Anderson Cooper their king (or queen, whatever — I’ve heard the rumors). He’s been the only member of the national press who’s been keeping a steady spotlight on BP and the feds along the gulf, especially in Louisiana. Plus, you can’t help but tell the guy honestly loves New Orleans.

Next, I wish the Baton Rouge Business Report would stop publishing Daily Report articles designed to “put the environmental catastrophe in perspective.” I know the folks there are only trying to help cheer us up by relaying the news that the scores of millions of gallons of crude in the gulf would fill only a fraction of the Superdome, but such reports invariably have the opposite effect on me. Instead of making me feel better about the situation, it pisses me off even more to think that a local publication is seemingly trying to downplay a disaster that could very well lead to the annihilation of my childhood culture.

Lastly, I think the president should fire Thad Allen as Nation Incident Commander. His cozy relationship with BP is stifling the cleanup efforts.