As YouTube gradually replaces TV as the idle brain’s opiate of choice, I am tempted to write such arrogant know-it-all tidbits as “it was only a matter of time before big-money PR firms took notice”. With the benefit of hindsight, and a helpful article by ABC News, I’m going to act like I always knew that Republican PR firms would use YouTube to subversively knock cultural artifacts that don’t suit their warped world-view.

Case in point: This absurdly dull video pushing the already-done-way-better-by-South-Park premise that Al Gore is boring when he talks about climate change. It turns out that the video was produced by Republican PR firm DCI, and funded by… Exxon! Check out the comments below the post for some Web-2.0-style punches to the head.

I hope that web culture can maintain this kind of democratic edge in the face of the occasional crackdown on bandwidth and free speech. And I dearly hope that DCI continues to post its astroturf videos on YouTube for immediate dissection by 8 million eager e-chisels.