“Art imitates life” is a commonly used phrase when some piece of art, literature or cinema that has been represented as fiction finds its way into our non-fiction world. Sitting in my home tonight I was presented with a doozy.
I was reading the editorial page in my local paper and my state chamber of commerce was doing its best chicken little imitation and expounding that the “sky was falling.” The president of the Ohio Chamber was proclaiming that Lieberman/Warner would be an economic Armageddon for my home state. He was citing statistics from a report from the American Council for Capital Formation.
I then turned on my television to HBO and was greeted by the hilarious film Thank You for Smoking. I enjoyed watching the film’s leading man site reports from the Academy of Tobacco Studies that happens to be funded by the Tobacco Companies.
This is where it gets good. The Washington Post reported on the same day that the American Council for Capitol Formation’s report, cited by chamber, is using assumptions provided by the National Association of Manufacturers.
“On closer examination, footnote no. 5 of the study says that SAIC does not endorse a word of the document. According to the footnote, the study’s inputs came from the groups that paid for the report — the National Association of Manufactures (NAM) and the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF), which have an interest in the results coming out that way. SAIC used its computer model on the data, but that was the extent of its involvement.”
Washington Post April 1, 2008.
Ladies and Gentleman, “Art imitates Life!” Fictitious tobacco lobbyist Nick Naylor would be so proud and we can only hope that Ohio’s United State Senators are as outraged as the Fictitious Senator Finistirre from the great state of Vermont.
This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 4:44 pm and is filed under Cap and Trade, Politics/Government, Pop Culture . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
