The BP oil disaster has revealed failed humans by the score, but it takes a special kind of wretchedness to try to capitalize on the oil gushing out of control into the Gulf of Mexico. Media Matters documents today Sarah Palin doing not only that, but doing so dishonestly. “Extreme Greenies: see now why we push ‘drill, baby, drill’ of known reserves & promising finds in safe onshore places like ANWR? Now do you get it?” Evidently, fault for the oil spill goes to environmentalists who forced BP to drill in deep waters and, I have to assume, brought such intimidating pressure on the poor oil company that it forgot to do environmental assessments, plan for possible leaks, conduct proper testing or run the well in a semi-responsible fashion.

When Palin revved up the “Drill, baby, drill” chant on the campaign trail, though, she wasn’t talking exclusively about onshore drill sites. She said on the campaign trail variations on “we will safely drill for the billions of barrels of oil that we have underground, including off-shore,” which she said in Reno, Nevada.

And her enthusiasm for off-shore drilling wasn’t just a youthful indiscretion from her campaign trail past. In May on Fox News, Greta Van Susteren asked her, “until we get to the bottom of [the oil disaster], you think we should continue to go full speed ahead with the offshore drilling?” Palin answered, “Absolutely.”

So to sum up, Palin had the remarkably poor taste to try to score political points on an environmental catastrophe on a scale that we haven’t seen before in America – not even in her beloved Alaska – and she lies to do it.

[For coverage of the BP disaster, I follow Library Chronicles, who does a great job rounding up stories on it with a strong sense of outrage.]