Heartland gets a change of heart
by David Atkins
Well, this was fast:
A stark mug shot of domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski briefly took center stage in the increasingly ugly debate over climate change Friday as the Heartland Institute, a libertarian think tank funded by major corporations, launched a billboard campaign equating people convinced that global warming is real to the convicted killer.
“I still believe in Global Warming. Do you?” read big orange letters next to the Unabomber’s infamously grizzled face on an electronic billboard along the Eisenhower Expressway outside Chicago, the Heartland Institute’s home.
The billboard went live Thursday afternoon. But by 4 p.m. Eastern time, an outcry from allies and opponents alike led the Heartland Institute’s president, Joe Bast, to say he would switch off the sign within the hour.
“The Heartland Institute knew this was a risk when deciding to test it, but decided it was a necessary price to make an emotional appeal to people who otherwise aren’t following the climate change debate,” Bast wrote in an e-mail to some of the institute’s supporters, explaining his decision to end the campaign.
I think we’ve finally hit the edge of the modern conservative Overton Window: a bunch of corporate astroturf hacks comparing the vast majority of the world’s scientists and heads of state to Ted Kaczynski and Osama Bin Laden. Everything short of that appears to be OK, but that’s just a step too far. For now.
That’s good to know, so that the traditional press can find the equivalent on the left side of the spectrum for “balance.” I’m sure they’ll find it somewhere–just as soon as they can find something that world leaders and academics agree with American conservatives about, and just as soon as they find the prominent liberal group comparing them to world-famous terrorists for it.
I’ll cue the Jeopardy theme while we wait.
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