Sooners who keep track of their legislators will be interested to know that Sen. Jim Inhofe is speaking this weekend at a climate conference in Chicago.
Of course, the event is what historian Daniel Boorstin once called a pseudo-event; that is, a made-for-the-media event designed to spread the message of its sponsor. In other words, propaganda.
In this case, the sponsor is the Heartland Institute, a conservative, free-market outfit that is challenging the whole global warming, climate change idea.
Given this mission, Inhofe is an ideal candidate, a back-bencher with little credibility on global warming or anything else. Naturally, he's one of the featured speakers at the conference.
Moreover, the conference is loaded with others of a similar persuasion, weathermen and deniers from such organizations as the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and—surprise!—the Heartland Institute itself.
With a lineup this insular and one-dimensional, it's unlikely that anything of substance will come out of the Chicago conference.
But that's the whole point of the shindig—sound and fury, signifying nothing.
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