The lighter side of mine disasters

Now that the miraculous rescue in Chile is complete, we take a moment to reflect and yes, laugh, about it.

The op-ed pages are usually places of acrimonious disagreement but today they are unified in an expression of collective punditary joy at the rescue of the 33 Chilean miners. For the sake of diversity we tried to find a columnist who thought they should have just been left down there, but alas we couldn’t. Here’s what we found instead.

“We conduct our daily lives oblivious to the fact that virtually every device we use, from a computer to a car to a ball-point pen, is made possible by a global legion of men working in claustrophobic conditions many hundreds of yards beneath the Earth’s surface,” writes the National Post’s Jonathan Kay. “And every single one of them is just one Earth-tremor or cave-in away from spending eternity entombed in a mine.” Something to think about.

“Now that the miners are free, the exploitation of their story is, alas, inevitable,” writes the Globe and Mail’s Margaret Wente. One of the miners told media he wanted to be treated like what he is, which is a simple worker. “Good luck with that,” says Wente. “The men will need every bit of their resilience to survive the circus that will now assault them. They’ll be lucky if the bonds they forged in adversity survive their new-found fame and fortune.”

Now that the miners are safe and sound, we’re hoping it’s safe to look at the lighter side of their ordeal. So here goes: If Twitter has anything to do with it, “go jump in a mine” will become a slang staple, one of the miners’ first words on being rescued should have been “I’m going to Graceland!”, the CBC has footage of the legendary 34th miner, Spike TV is planning a mine-themed reality show, the ordeal generated six adultery revelations and $41 million worth of advertising for Oakley sunglasses, the miners stayed sane by telling dirty jokes, rescue workers challenged Los 33 to soccer game (losing team goes back in the mine), and after their fortuitous escape the miners will continue to get lucky.