(video h/t Heather) Sigh. Apparently David Brooks didn't write a full column on natural gas that he could read on the air this week, so he had to read from some industry literature on the subject. It sure sounded that way to me:
MR. GREGORY: We are back. More of our roundtable with the roundtable here. I want to talk politics. I also want to talk about the politics of gas prices.
Alex, you were saying in the break this is what can be connected economically to the president in terms of an economic downturn. T. Boone Pickens, natural gas advocate, of course, and, and author of "The Pickens Plan For Energy Independence." I spoke with him this week as part of our Press Pass mid-week conversation, which is available on our blog, and he said there was a promise made about energy independence by this president that has not been a promise kept. This is what he said.
(Videotape)
MR. T. BOONE PICKENS: I remember very well what he said when he was nominated. He said that in 10 years we will not import any oil from the Mideast. We're almost three years deep now from when he made that statement. There's been no plan put forth that I've seen, and--since he's been president, to accomplish that unless he started talking about natural gas. And when you get down to it, we don't have a, a number of options.
(End videotape)
MR. GREGORY: David Brooks, a year ago after the gulf oil spill, this president said, "What I will not accept is inaction in the energy debate," and yet that's where we are.
MR. BROOKS: Yeah, well, he joins a long list of presidents who have failed at this. But I do think the natural gas point is an essential point. Wherever you go around the country--western Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, Texas--I've been a lot of places where we're finding new natural gas deposits here. It seems to be the fuel of the future even though it's the fuel of the president. The problem is we don't have the infrastructure to really exploit it. And that--I think this is an area where we have to get over our aversion to fossil fuels and our fantasy that we're going to live off solar and wind, which we're not. And--but that's an intellectual leap that the political class has to make.
If we're really talking about the politics of this, why not talk about how Congress is owned by the resource-extraction sector -- the oil, natural gas, and coal industries -- to the point of disarming the EPA, ignoring science, and allowing industry leaders to "write" imaginary "regulations" of itself? That link points to David Brooks's own newspaper, you think he might have read it. It's absolutely clear that he's read industry propaganda and committed key phrases to memory.
And while a corporate-owned media is old news, we are only beginning to question how much big industries own individuals in the media. It's not enough just to examine who openly sponsors shows like Meet the Press. How much PG&E stock does David Brooks own? What energy companies sit in David Gregory's portfolio? Are the cocktails at the Greenspans' Georgetown soirees completely fracking fluid-free? Are these voices benefiting personally from pushing a pro-industry agenda? Ya think?
Why else would their comments and complete lack of follow-up sound like they are written by the industries themselves?
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