Time to dust off the ol’ “P-word”?

On a beautiful Sunday morning, as I watched the first regular episode of Meet the Press in my lifetime without Tim Russert moderating, I noticed something odd about the commercials. Well, I always do, since they’re usually commercials for corporations so large they don’t really need advertisements, but make so much G-D money, even a finely polished seven-figure spot is just penny candy to them, so why not, right?

These companies include GE (who own NBC); Dow, Boeing, UBS, ExxonMobil, and the Oil and Natural Gas Industry. It’s those last two that really stick in my craw, because they are often nothing more than 21st century propaganda, pure and simple. Between segments of a program such as Meet the Press – in which legitimate debate over issues such as energy costs and the dream of American energy independence – are essentially diluted every time there’s a commercial break by ads professing an extremely biased political position as fact in an effort to confuse the less informed (or conscious) members of the viewing public.

I am fortunately not naive enough to believe ExxonMobil when they say they are committed to alternative energy and lithum ion battery development, because that would mean being committed to not making as much profit as possible, which is totally bogus. Their current ad features a gentle liberalesque looking professor/scientist type with a slightly broken voice, with a backdrop of mathematical equations and – for good measure – one of the hybrid vehicles they claim they’d love to see more of – specifically, a goofy-looking Smart car with a Mercedes grille!

This portrayal of an hybrid/alternative fuel car gives Exxon’s hand away – they want the public to believe that only tiny impractical cars devoid of style or dignity will result from this line of development. The GM EV1 is another example of large industries being lazy, implying “Look at this monstrosity. You don’t really want to see these barf-tastic pansywagons on the road, do you?”

Anyway, I digress. Far worse than Exxon’s goofy ad that oddly contains not a drop of their most profitable product, petroleum, is the Oil and Natural Gas Industry’s aggressive new campaign, which states that more drilling will help us attain independence and lower costs, or something. This is what the President is saying, and it’s not surprising, because he was an oil man, and even if he’s not in bed with them, he’s looking out for their interests over those of more modest political influence – like, say, those of most Americans.

The Oil and Natural Gas Industries’ commercial shows nuclear families having fun, people getting married, all sorts of happy stuff – even a sixteen wheeler driving by, cleaning the air with its exhaust! Not very subtle with the BS, are they? Yet the commercial itself is so carefully orchestrated and presented with such conviction and cerrtitude, most Americans who saw it would believe every word of it, or at least have their opinions on the industries greatly influenced. You might think I’m insulting the average American’s intelligence, but don’t blame the messenger; it’s the makers of these ridiculous ads who think we’re all morons with minds as pliable as playdough. They sing the praises of a resource whose increasing price will render it unviable as a product in the next fifty years.

Neither Exxon nor the Oil/Gas industry are being helpful by continuting to confuse the masses.
I realize they’re buying time; they need to make as much money as they can now, while prices are still low enough to avoid a mass exodus from petroleum vehicles.

Already, truck and SUV sales are tanking, you can’t give them away, and companies are scaling back future development and production, and in some cases, phasing out truck-based SUVs altogether. If prices were to suddenly go down (and read my lips, NO new drilling or uptick in production would trigger any significant decrease at this point) demand for bigger, more inefficient vehicles will rise again, and we’ll be back at square one.

The auto industry must bear a lot of the blame for this possibility. It’s cheaper to sell big inefficient trucks, so they keep developing them. It can take more than five years to develop a new model from start to finish, so most of the industry already has cars fully designed or in the works up until 2015. So far the industry hasn’t looked far enough ahead to remove inefficient cars and trucks from the equation, and I don’t blame them. People like Escalades and Camaros, and this is America, so they should be allow to buy as many as they want. But sadly, it’s doubtful that such a practice will stay viable for long as developing countries become more developed.

Whew, quite a tangent there. Sorry; that happens sometimes. It’s not even worth mentioning the Coal industry’s ad campaign – “Clean coal – America’s resource.” Trying to make coal consumption some kind of patriotic practice – sounds like propaganda to me. “Clean coal?” Hell, even their slogan is an oxymoron. Anyone who touts coal as a clean and environmentally friendly resource needs to be shipped to Beijing and made to live there and inhale the city’s smog for ten years, a punishment I wouldn’t wish upon my most lethal enemies (providing I had such enemies.) Which reminds me, I suppose olympic athletes will be subjected to that punishment…whoops, another tangent…

…I’ll just close by saying, please; for the love of all that is holy, if you ever see an ad for something like oil or coal or Exxon, do yourself a favor and press “Mute.” You won’t miss anything.

The goals of these industries are not the same as the average Joe. You’re looking to hold onto your money; they’re looking to take it. And if you let them, they’ll take as much as they can, and aren’t above using propaganda to do it.