What happened to those adorable clean coal carolers?!
After just three days of online absurdity, the coal industry front group, "America's Power" canned the anthropomorphic singing chunks of coal from their website amidst a torrent of netroots pressure.
After getting kicked around by the blogosphere for a few days, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity's absurd and more than slightly disturbing and sacrilegious effort to win the hearts and minds of Americans with doctored Christmas carols was eventually pilloried by Rachel Maddow on MSNBC:
"How about turning the most famous song in the English language about the birth of Jesus into a commercial for the coal industry? ... Where are all those war on Christmas people when you need them?!"
Today, the coal front group pulled the clean coal carolers from their website and took down the facebook page (which had been joined by about a dozen new Facebook members with names like "Asthma Al" and "Black Lung Billy" soon after it was launched!). The group's blog only had this to say by way of explanation: "We had fun this week with the Clean Coal Carolers and hope you enjoyed them. Now it's time for them to head home for the holidays."
Well WE certainly had some fun with them too, and I think we all know why they took down the clean coal carolers (right, like they planned to only have them online for three days and pull them 13 days before Christmas... Sure...). At least today, chock this one up as another win for the netroots and a loss for multi-million dollar industry-sponsored greenwashing. Happy Holidays!
(Luckily, someone caught the "Frosty the Coal Man" video on youtube for posterity before it's hilarity was lost forever. Check it out below the fold...)
2 comments:
Too Funny!!! Thanks for telling this story.
You should check out some of the comments on the Joe Lucas' VP of Communications of ACCCE americapower behind the plug blog. I love how Joe tries to pull more-holier-than-thou religious rank on critics: "I'll put my years as a Sunday school teacher, church deacon and church musician up against just about anybody else when it comes to understanding hymnology and respect for religious traditions." Must be the Church of Clean Coal!!!! Ha Ha, I'm writing to nominate Joe as Arch-Deacon. Way to go Joe!
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