Listeners to our radio show know "Laffy" well. On Fridays, GottaLaff (her only public name) brought us her list of the whackiest stories of the week - in some cases, bringing us the only laughs around some pretty grim situations.

I was privileged to meet Laffy when she visited SF. We sat at the Brick (oh the Brick, how we miss those post-show cocktails! We'll come see you soon), lingered long over dinner, and in the course of getting to know each other mentioned this new idea she had. My Swiss-cheese memory may fail me here, but I think she already had the name for it she's still using: BLUNT.Laffy thought that collating brief videoed statements from anyone who cared to submit them would yield powerful, important commentary. I had my doubts and I expressed them. Another outlet for opinions? Oh, brother.

One thing I loathe about our culture is the dismal ratio of signal to noise, of facts to opinion. Opinions are like - well, you know. TV and radio are rotten with pundits, considerably lighter on true authorities. Informed, instructive experts might be boring! They might not wield witty repartee! They may indulge in long, complex sentences going into a break! Yeah, that's why public broadcasting consistently garners excellent ratings in so many markets - all those lightweights cracking wise.

Thus my big fear that Laffy's new project would ultimately - and only - pile more snark into an already saturated market.  Venting's a healthy emotional practice, sure, but it's not like we lack outlets.

Suffice to say, my vision was way too limited on this one, while Laffy and her indefatigable TPC colleague Paddy had the sharper view.  BLUNT, while promising in its first efforts, has undeniably come into its own with its latest offering, Dear BP.

Yes, it's full of people venting. But my god, this isn't a foul ball or some reality star's tiff with her commercially-provided boytoy we're facing. It's a death whose breadth we can't even grasp yet - may not grasp for generations. We're all at the same funeral; we might as well grieve and vent together.

                                                                            (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

It's more than that, though. Incredibly, BP and its masters, particularly in the person of Tony "Mine is the biggest loss" Hayward, are expending as much or more energy shepherding their image and manipulating news as they are trying to deal with the spilled oil. (Can you imagine forbidding clean-up crews respirators? To borrow a line from Chevron, yes, apparently - "People Do".) And despite lukewarm denials, plenty of on-the-scene professionals attest that BP and the US government - from the Coast Guard to the FAA - have cooperated toward those ends.

BLUNT's latest webisode makes it clear that we, the People, are watching. That our furiously-typing fingers are outing the lies we see. That our anger is not the frustration of the impotent but an ingredient of powerful protest. That the tools of knowledge, truth, and - is it hyperbole to say the word? - revolution are not yet under full control of the monied. BLUNT's promise fulfilled is the melding of our informed, individual voices into warnings to the mighty. We are not, as yet, outnumbered.

This is the promise of the internet we've heard so much about. My hat is off to GottaLaff, for seeing so much further than I could that night at the Brick, when she first unveiled her idea. So Tony Hayward wants his life back? If he's in fact yearning for the lost world when BP and its ilk could get away with anything - let's not give it to him. GottaLaff's BLUNT will help us achieve that goal.