Heartland Institute pulls unibomber billboard after backlash and calls it an "experiment"...

[cynatnite]

The group has a conference set for later this month, and one of the featured speakers is Sensenbrenner. I asked Sensenbrenner’s spokesperson, Amanda Infield, if he’s still participating. She emails:

Congressman Sensenbrenner will not participate in the upcoming Climate Change Conference if the Heartland Institute decides to continue this ad campaign. We have contacted the Heartland Institute and voiced these same concerns to them.

Joe Romm reports that a several major corporations have ended their support for Heartland, but many still continue to bankroll it, and many other prominent voices are expected to speak at Heartland’s conference.

As Andrew Sullivan, writing about the billboards, put it: “In some ways, this is an almost perfect illustration of what has happened to the `right.’ A refusal to acknowledge scientific reality; and a brutalist style of public propaganda that focuses entirely on guilt by the most extreme association.”

Indeed, it’s likely that the pressure will increase, via social media, for these companies and voices to sever their ties with Heartland until they pull the billboards down. As Sensenbrenner has showed by pulling out, there are some positions that are too extreme for “climate skeptical” mainstream Republicans to countenance, such as comparing climate change science believers to mass murderers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/leading-house-goper-chastises-right-wing-group-for-comparing-climate-change-believers-to-madment/2012/05/04/gIQAfI521T_blog.html


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Update: Heartland just announced that they’re pulling the billboard, which they described as an “experiment.”

http://climateconference.heartland.org/our-billboards/

[LASlibinSC]

1. Damn!

experiment my butt! These yoyos thought they were preaching to the choir! When they realized they were getting thrown out of the church, they changed the sermon!

[gratuitous]

2. Oh, an "experiment" was it? You know who ELSE "experimented"

Yeah. Nazis, that's who.