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You’ve probably already heard: In a video “press conference” that has already been seen by almost two million people, Kermit and Miss Piggy take on, and take down, Fox News.

The provocation? A comment by a conservative media watcher, Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center, on the Fox Business Channel—accusing the new Muppets movie of being  “liberal” since the bad guy in the film turns out to be an oil tycoon. It was just part of Fox Business host Eric Bolling going on about whether liberals, through the flick, are “trying to brainwash your kids against capitalism.”

In the press conference, Kermit responds to the charge by noting that in the movie, the Muppets are actually riding in a “gas guzzling Rolls Royce.”

Miss Piggy then goes one better, calling the accusation “almost as laughable as accusing Fox News as being, you know, news.”

Now even Bill O’Reilly has weighed in, telling the Muppets to “watch it.” I think he may have been joking. I think.

I wouldn’t make so much of this, were it not for the fact that this kind of thing happens all the time. I mean, it was just last year that Fox picked a fight with SpongeBob Squarepants—because SpongeBob dared to be accurate about global warming.

And liberals laughed, and snickered.

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ExxonMobil gave $1.5 million to climate deniers and industry front groups known for working to create doubt about global warming, attacking the integrity of climate scientists, and protecting the status quo for polluters, according to a front-page story in the Times of London today. 

Contrary to its stated commitment to stop funding climate denier groups, the Exxon funding spigot remained as open as the BP gusher, continuing to pollute the media landscape with oil-soaked misinformation designed to cripple international action on climate change.

Greenpeace’s ExxonSecrets project has documented the nearly $25 million spent by ExxonMobil since 1998 to fund climate denier groups.

Exxon-funded groups used their latest infusion of oil money to create a media frenzy over the “Climategate” non-scandal and other efforts to derail progress towards an international agreement to fight climate change at the COP-15 talks in Copenhagen last winter.

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The most vocal organizations around the University of East Anglia hacked email story (aka. “climategate”) have been involved in a decade-plus campaign to delay action on climate change.

The goal of this campaign, which began around the time of the first Kyoto Protocol negotiations, was to assemble a group of like-minded “free-market” think tanks and pseudo-experts that would bring into question the scientific realities of climate change, create doubt with the public and politicians and effectively delay the introduction of clean energy policy in the United States.

It’s no coincidence that the groups pushing this story the hardest have a long history of taking money from oil and coal companies to attack the conclusions made by climate scientists.

What I wouldn’t do to have a few of these organizations private emails over the years!

Here’s a few of the groups I’m talking about and a very brief background on their previous activities, as well as funding sources:

Center for a Constructive Tomorrow: owns and operate ClimateDepot.com, which has been a main clearinghouse for the right-wing climategate echo chamber. ClimateDepot.com is managed by Marc Morano, former aide to Republican Senator James Inhofe. CFACT has received grants from Exxon Mobil, Chevron, and well-known right-wing foundations like the Carthage Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation.

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Health care reform seems a long way from climate change but they share something very important in common: well funded interest groups that want to keep things just the way they are.

Take the Manhattan Institute. They are railing against proposed health care reform, churning out a dizzying number of reports and op-eds about why “Obama-care” is wrong for America. They also expend abundant effort slagging climate science, last year feting Danish doubter Bjorn Lomborg. The Manhattan Institute received $235,000 from ExxonMobil, as well as funding from various other conservative organizations.

Or the Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog that has received $257,500 from ExxonMobil, and regularly gripes about how biased the US media is towards the “theory” of climate change, or the need to overhaul the health care system.

Other groups working hard to derail Obama’s health care platform include the notorious Heartland Institute. Desmog Blog readers will remember their remarkably unethical efforts to associate unwitting climate researchers with their propaganda campaign against climate science.

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Forget any real science, when it comes to right-wing bloggers apparently all it takes to disprove an entire body of scientific evidence is the conspiracy theories of a retired weatherman.

The blog portion of Brett Bozell's Media Research Center, Newsbusters, ExxonMobil funded, echo chamber is today asking, "if the founder of The Weather Channel spoke out strongly against the manmade global warming myth, might media members notice?"

Yes Newsbusters, I'm sure the media will report on a retired weatherman's rantings about a global conspiracy of scientists and environmentalists.

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When the oil-industry friendly Brett Bozell Media Research Center echo chamber isn't spreading misinformation about the state of climate change science, it has other interests such as the war in Iraq.

Here's some archived quotes from the MRC concerning the Iraq war: (added emphasis in italics)

War is hell, but a short, successful war that ends with the natives dancing in the streets presents a particular hell for the 'peace' movement."