It is this kind of Blind Faith — which is ironically the name of an actual rig in the Gulf — that has led to this kind of disaster.
Congressman Edward Markey at the oil disaster hearing
Parenthesis, the insertion. From the Greek, meaning “insertion.”
;)
The BP catastrophe wouldn’t happen on our rigs, say the chairmen of Exxon Mobil and Chevron. Anticipating their comments, Ed Markey came up with the best quote at the hearings.
We don’t think of a parenthesis as a figure of speech, but that’s exactly how it started its career. Parentheses aren’t punctuation; those little half-circles denote them. Used deftly, they can add an eyebrow-raising “oh-by-the-way” to a sentence, reinforcing a point in a way that makes it seem inevitable.
Markey did this by working backwards. His staff discovered that Blind Faith is the name of a rig; presumably in honor of the great blues-rock band, not their philosophy on safety. He uses the phrase as if it’s his own, then parenthesizes the rig.
Result: great irony. Great parenthesis. Rotten oil execs.