Shady Business

So there’s this lame spoof of Al Gore on YouTube—and trust me, it’s genuinely lame; that assessment isn’t shaded by my fondness for its target—which casts him as “a sinister figure who brainwashes penguins and bores movie audiences by blaming the Mideast crisis and starlet Lindsay Lohan's shrinking waist size on global warming.” (Its maker was apparently as offended by March of the Penguins as An Inconvenient Truth.)

But that’s not the only curious thing about its maker, as the Wall Street Journal discovered.

The video's maker is listed as "Toutsmith," a 29-year-old who identifies himself as being from Beverly Hills in an Internet profile.

In an email exchange with The Wall Street Journal, Toutsmith didn't answer when asked who he was or why he made the video, which has just over 59,000 views on YouTube. However, computer routing information contained in an email sent from Toutsmith's Yahoo account indicate it didn't come from an amateur working out of his basement.

Instead, the email originated from a computer registered to DCI Group, a Washington, D.C., public relations and lobbying firm whose clients include oil company Exxon Mobil Corp.

A DCI Group spokesman declines to say whether or not DCI made the anti-Gore penguin video, or to explain why Toutsmith appeared to be sending email from DCI's computers.

…Traffic to the penguin video, first posted on YouTube.com in May, got a boost from prominently placed sponsored links that appeared on the Google search engine when users typed in "Al Gore" or "Global Warming." The ads, which didn't indicate who had paid for them, were removed shortly after The Wall Street Journal contacted DCI Group on Tuesday.

Is there anything criminal about this? No. Unethical? Arguably. Pathetic? Certainly. Can’t win an argument on the facts? Just mock your opponents! The tactic is dismal enough when someone has the balls to do it outright (I’m looking at you, Ann Coulter), but when they’re not even willing to leave their fingerprints on it, that’s just all kinds of disgraceful.

Frankly, I don’t think there’s a better endorsement for the accuracy of An Inconvenient Truth than the desperation of Exxon to wage such a dishonorable clandestine campaign against it.