The American Spectator

TNR , which once published sensible pieces by Gregg Easterbrook. Yet its editorial dismisses global warming skeptics as “Exx-Cons” (Exxon Conservatives). They are called a “network of oil-funded think tankers and conservative media outlets.” A Fox News documentary is dismissed because it “featured the entire cast of Exx-con luminaries, including Patrick Michaels, John Christy, Roy Spencer, and Senator James Inhofe.” So is an article in National Review that “relies on research from three scientists connected to the energy industry.” The Competitive Enterprise Institute likewise lacks credibility on global warming because it has taken “over $1.5 million in donations from ExxonMobil alone since 1998.” “Washington think tanks are not always paragons of intellectual integrity,” TNR intones, “but we can’t quite remember the last time that an institution ostensibly devoted to research so transparently whored itself to corporate backers — in this case, the oil industry.” The lesson of the TNR editorial seems to be that if you tar your opponents as corporate flaks often enough, you don’t have to bother much with their arguments. p> TNR also gripes about the new ad campaign launched by the Competitive Enterprise Institute: br> /p>

The two 60-second spots created by the oil industry-backed Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) — over $1.5 million in donations from ExxonMobil alone since 1998—will be remembered for breaking the barrier between advertising parodies and actual ads. In “Energy,” a young girl dreamily exhales carbon dioxide while evergreen trees soak in the life-sustaining compound. Our right to freely exchange this compound, CEI suggests, is now under attack. The ad makes the War on Christmas look like a mild skirmish compared with the impending confrontation over CO2. “Carbon dioxide,” an announcer intones. “They call it pollution. We call it life.”

br> That paragraph will be remembered for how it breaks the barrier between opinion journalism and distortion. The