Obama’s Modus Operandi: NYT Coverage of Coen Brothers Clean Coal Ad
Okay, back to the Times. There’s this nugget rocketed straight out of the Confuse The Weak-Minded with Hyperbole meth lab of a coal industry think tank:
Of course, even The Reality Coalition’s own language suggests that the clean coal the Obama administration hopes to pursue is not necessarily a pipe dream. It just does not exist yet.
See the above explanation of O maneuvering and additionally: Really, NYT? Really: the contemptuous dismissal of the urgency of the climate situation by means of a pipe smoking metaphor the words of which are jammed like so many marijuana cigarettes into the Obama administration’s mouth. Smooth! The Times shills for the Coal Industry bolstering an attitude of accountability tantamount to a pot-head dealer saying “I’m going to be CEO of that fortune 500 company, but I’m just not there yet. I’m going to stop toking away my best work days soon.” The “of course” used to launch the sentence was a nice touch too — just to make sure we knew the author was being snarky. Hey, it worked for those snarking blogger kids who have been stealing our journalistic cheese for some time now, to the point of newspaper industry collapse! Let’s we journalists get down and snarky right quick.
Then, The Times caps it off by adhering to the highest standards of journalism; that being snide, dismissive and unsubstantiated crap (okay, now I’m being snarky):
It is unclear whether the ads are having the intended effect — that is, nudging the coal companies to more quickly develop carbon capture and storage — or merely convincing Americans that improving the greenhouse emissions of the coal industry is an impossibility.
Talk about your nihilism. Dude, that’s a grim view of what’s trying to be accomplished here. Haven’t you read the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People? What you be doing called “lose-lose,” baby.
Further, 1) the intended effect is not to nudge coal companies and 2) there is nothing “mere” in informing Americans about the truth of coal. That is to say in countering a multi-million dollar disinformation campaign to afford the American People an opportunity to choose honestly the path for the planet there is no small aim of achieving the minor result of pissing in the coal industry’s well. The aim is nothing less than to bring forth the inconvenient truth that time is of the essence, or put differently, time no longer permits for the development of carbon capture and storage.
