In Monday’s Washington Post, media-industry reporter Frank Ahrens finds that the cable giant Discovery Communications is bringing Earth worship into the mainstream:
“In April, the cable programming giant said it would switch its Discovery Home channel to a Planet Green channel early next year. Last week, the company expanded its eco-portfolio by announcing it will buy TreeHugger.com, a Web site founded in 2004 that provides news and product information for the environmentally acute.”
That’s liberal code for “leftists who wear bamboo underwear.” You think I kid? Treehugger.com carries articles like “How to Green Your Sex Life,” where you learn the latest on how condoms can offend vegans and how “Organic cotton, hemp silk, bamboo, and other renewable fibers make ultra-sexy lingerie and underwear.”
And yet, the Washington Post suggests the Discovery barons are taking “green” into the mainstream: “It is a sign of the quickly changing ethos on the environment that until only recently, the term ‘tree-hugger’ was considered an insult in many quarters. Now, it is a valuable brand inside a global, mainstream television network.”