I guess it just ain't "news"

Yesterday, the Guardian revealed that oil giant Exxon played an important role in developing US policy towards climate change and that BushCorp™ rejected the Kyoto protocols based on input from Exxon, as well as other Big Energy companies:

In briefing papers given before meetings to the US under-secretary of state, Paula Dobriansky, between 2001 and 2004, the administration is found thanking Exxon executives for the company's "active involvement" in helping to determine climate change policy, and also seeking its advice on what climate change policies the company might find acceptable.

Other papers suggest that Ms Dobriansky should sound out Exxon executives and other anti-Kyoto business groups on potential alternatives to Kyoto.

Until now Exxon has publicly maintained that it had no involvement in the US government's rejection of Kyoto. But the documents, obtained by Greenpeace under US freedom of information legislation, suggest this is not the case.

"Potus [president of the United States] rejected Kyoto in part based on input from you [the Global Climate Coalition]," says one briefing note before Ms Dobriansky's meeting with the GCC, the main anti-Kyoto US industry group, which was dominated by Exxon.

The papers further state that the White House considered Exxon "among the companies most actively and prominently opposed to binding approaches [like Kyoto] to cut greenhouse gas emissions".

This story to date has garnered a total of 10 citations in Google news (as opposed to the almost 1,400 citations for Michael Jackson's return to the hospital).

I should be outraged, but I suppose that it's been so long assumed that BushCorp™ is in the pocket of Big Oil that confirmation of that belief just doesn't constitute "news".

The same could be said for the media yawn which greeted the minutes of a Downing street meeting confirming that BushCorp™ was "fixing" the intelligence to build a case for war in Iraq. Everyone has known all along that Georgie was aching for any excuse to outshine Daddy Bush.

You have to hand it to Rove and the boys (and girls) of BushCorp™ for a brilliant and unorthodox tactic. If you carefully cultivate a reputation for corruption, no-one's surprised by evidence that you are indeed corrupt. Way to go.