Inhofe Watch: Senator's aide to run new dis-info campaign

Spin specialist Marc Morano is leaving the staff of Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), but will continue to apply his skills to keeping the public dis-informed and confused about global warming.

Morano has been paid with taxpayer dollars for the past few years to keep right wing pundits and media outlets well-supplied with "every misleading factoid, every attack on climate science or scientists, [and] every crank skeptical statement from anyone in the world," as Dave Roberts wrote recently on Gristmill. (Here's the list.)

Now Morano is leaving Sen. Jim's office to run a new web site about global warming. According to Gristmill's Kate Sheppard, Morano's future paychecks will be cut by Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a Washington DC-based think tank devoted to extreme free market advocacy, "...funded by Big Oil and, most entertainingly, billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, the wackjob who spent millions in the 1990s trying to prove that Bill and Hillary Clinton committed a list of crimes that would make Hitler blush. (Wonk Room's Brad Johnson has more on CFACT.)"

In 2006 I got to watch Morano earn his paycheck firsthand. Sitting before a ballroom full of environmental journalists, some of whom he'd attacked on personal terms as part of a day's work, Morano knew better than to try defending the indefensible low ground -- Sen. Inhofe's denial of the facts of global warming. Instead he stormed the hilltop, by blaming this audience -- some of the nation's best-informed on global warming science and policy -- for their supposed bias in reporting on the issue!

Deflecting attention from one's own political sins by blaming the media isn't particularly original, but it was cheeky to use this spin tactic before a ballroom full of reporters. Morano did it without breaking a sweat.

Hearing of his exit from the public payroll to, it looks like, run his own operation reminded me of this exchange from the 2006 film Thank You for Smoking:

Lorne Lutch, cancer-stricken former "Marlboro Man": You look like a nice enough fella. What are you doing working for these assholes?

Nick Naylor, Big Tobacco lobbyist: I'm good at it. Better at doing this than I ever was at doing anything else.

Lorne Lutch: Aw, hell, son. I was good at shooting VC. I didn't make it my career.

Images:

First: "Ice Melter and Traction Aid," sold by Sislers Stone

Second: Extreme ice melt in Greenland, c. 2002. Via NASA, Photo Courtesy Roger J. Braithwaite, The University of Manchester, UK