Astroturf will out, always
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border-width:1px;” />Did DCI, Exxon’s DC lobbying firm, have a hand in producing the recent YouTube hit, “Al Gore’s Penguin Army,” which pokes fun at the president-in-exile’s global warming documentary “An Inconvenient Truth?” It certainly looks like it. Though the video’s creator is allegedly a 29-year-old hipster called “Toutsmith,” his email account has been traced to computers owned by DCI. Exxon denies any role in the creation of the video, but DCI is more circumspect, telling reporters that “DCI Group does not disclose the names of its clients, nor do we discuss the work that we do on our clients’ behalf.” Ironically, the Toutsmith/DCI relationship was uncovered by conservative bastion The Wall Street Journal, which also pointed out that the video caught fire not due to natural, viral growth but thanks to text ads purchased on Google against keywords like “global warming.” When the Journal asked DCI about the video, the ads suddenly vanished. Nice try, DCI. The debacle is a good lesson to astroturfers everywhere: you can run the video, but you can’t hide. (Though I do suspect that Toutsmith has a bright future in the video news release biz.)
