THE NEW REPUBLIC APOCALYPSE SOON/
November 15, 2023 ASTROSURF
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| THEY BURIED IT IN OCEAN WIND'S BACK YARD |
The Latest Culture War StartsWith Dead Whales
The ad opens with lush footage of humpback whales in the open ocean, set over somber cello music.
“Hunted to near extinction, they rebounded against all the odds,” a narrator says. “But new peril lurks beneath the waves: offshore wind.”
The images shift to whale carcasses being dragged off the beach. “Save the whales,” the narrator chants. “Dump New Jersey Democrats.”
This ad attacking New Jersey Democratic State Senator Vin Gopal, locked in a tight race for reelection in his 11th district,
wasn’t paid for by some fringe environmental group. It was part of a five-figure ad buy from the Republican State Leadership Committee. The RSLC, in turn, received hundreds of thousands of dollars in the first half of this year from oil interests including Marathon Petroleum, Devon Energy, the American Petroleum Institute, and Energy Transfer.
“We get a lot of misinformation that it’s killing dolphins and whales,” Gopal said shortly after a dead whale washed up on the beach in his hometown. “That’s not true, but you have conspiracy theorists saying it’s killing whales and dolphins without any proof.
