Last Sunday’s episode of CBS’s Madam Secretary, which stars Tèa Leoni as “Secretary of State Elizabeth McCord” (another episode airs tonight), advanced liberal paranoia that the oil lobby is using nefarious means to push the long-delayed Keystone Pipeline.
Pressed by the Canadian Ambassador and the President to read and approve a State Department report on the environmental impact of “the pipeline” (it was never given a name in the show), an aghast “McCord” discovers “it was written by an oil lobbyist. The biggest one on K Street, in fact!”
So, she delays her decision and demands six months to produce an honest, “independent” report.
In a scene before she learns the evil “Cathcart Group,” an oil lobbying firm had written the report, McCord’s speechwriter was sludged by anti-pipeline protesters outside the State Department building. He recounted his confrontation in which he offered some pro-pipeline points:
“He started by claiming that the pipeline would add CO2 to the atmosphere, so I had to tell him that it’s nothing compared to the trucks and tanker cars we’d need if we didn’t have the pipeline.”
