(BP, Tony Hayward story updated for government comments on BP, oil spill)

NEW YORK (

TheStreet

) -- Former

BP

(BP) - Get Report

CEO Tony Hayward, his yacht, and his oil spill deck of quote cards are back in the news on Tuesday morning -- but isn't time that Tony Hayward moved on?

With timing almost as good as former President George Bush coming out of the woodwork (or out of the Texas mesquite and brushwork), for a round of media interviews a day after the Republicans handed President Obama a Texas-sized thumping at the polls, former BP CEO Tony Hayward on Tuesday gave his first interview to the media since stepping down as BP boss. On Monday, the U.S. government announced at an oil spill hearing that it doesn't think BP cut corners and prioritized cost over safety in its BP well operations. Hayward opined to the

BBC

about his infamous yachting excursion during the oil spill, among other well-played, and at this point, nauseatingly overplayed subjects.

Of course, no two headlines from the media about the Hayward BBC interview were the same. The

BBC

report led with Hayward's comment that the media response to the oil spill was a "feeding frenzy." Current BP CEO Robert Dudley has also made a big issue of the media frenzy in his recent commentary. BP has no one to blame but itself for the feeding frenzy, though, since it feeds its constantly, instead of just moving on with its business and letting go of the oil spill mistakes, of which there were plenty made by the British oil company.

Reuters

, meanwhile, tried to scrape one more headline out of Hayward's yacht, leading with Hayward's decision to defend his yachting excursion. "I have to confess, at the time I was pretty angry actually. I hadn't seen my son for three months. I was on the boat for six hours.... I'm not certain I'd do anything different," Hayward was quoted as saying to the

BBC

. Hayward took a boating trip with his young son on the Isle of Wight during the middle of the oil spill crisis.

The

AP

went with Hayward stating that BP was "unprepared" for the oil spill.

As far as the timing of Hayward's comments, if BP thinks that Monday's comments from the government mean it's an oil spill cakewalk from here on out, BP had better think again.

On Tuesday, the White House oil spill commission co-chair Bill Reilly said that all the companies involved in the oil spill -- BP,

Transocean

(RIG) - Get Report

and

Halliburton

(HAL) - Get Report

-- lacked a culture of safety when it came to operations on the Deepwater Horizon rig. Reilly called for wholesale reform at the oil spill companies, a day after National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling chief investigator Fred Bartlit said at the oil spill hearings that there is no evidence that BP made decisions based on money as opposed to safety.

Tony Hayward may be repeating the same old BP defense, but the government seems to be speaking out of both sides of its head. Reilly tried to explain away the good cop-bad cop routine from the government during the oil spill hearings by saying that there is a difference between assigning mercenary motives to someone, which the government wasn't prepared to do, and describing a corporate culture as lacking appropriate safety protocols, which he said was clearly the case with BP and the other oil spill companies.

The government's tortured response makes Tony Hayward seem clear-headed. It's not hard to understand the impulse from Hayward to not let the issue rest, either. He's like a perverse version of Oscar Schindler, who always thinks he can do more. In Hayward's case, though, it's an Oscar Schindler only interested in doing more for himself and his company's image.

BP clearly still has the PR strategy of coming out swinging in the oil spill media game, when the right thing to do might be to say, "We're no longer talking about the past, but moving on and getting back to business."

In fact, with the latest comments from the former BP CEO, it seems that Tony Hayward doesn't want his life back after all. It might be better for BP and Hayward if they could just rest easy in their new lives without another round of meaningless, defensive comments.

Wait, there's got to be at least one more joke in here before BP oil spill media frenzy exhibit 8 trillion signs off. Of course ... how could we forget. Isn't it about time for Tony Hayward to sail off into the sunset?

-- Written by Eric Rosenbaum in New York.

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