Mud-slinging over the 'Energy Hog'

Regardless of political party or administration, federal agencies seem to have an uncanny knack for misguided and ill-timed PR campaigns.

As the nation struggles with what is arguably its most serious energy crisis since the 1970s, the Energy Department blithely continues to support an Ad Council campaign centered on an animated "spokesvillain" called the "Energy Hog."

The sophomoric nature of the initiative, carried to irritating lengths in its press literature, begs to be ridiculed: "'I'm moving in, but don't want no trouble,' the Energy Hog grunted and snorted. 'I just wanna stir things up a bit in my new digs.'" (Cringe.)

Blog community response:

"They had a choice between George Bush being a leader and announcing real, honest plans to cut energy consumption and work towards alternatives to our existing, dwindling, fuel sources. They chose the cartoon pig."
--Steve's No Direction Home Page

"Like McGruff the Crime Dog and Petey the Sexual Harassment Panda, I'm pretty sure that the Energy Hog will be ignored and ridiculed. But wait, there's more! The Energy Hog has its own website! It requires Flash, which I hate. It's also mind-bogglingly useless and infantile, with little info."
--SomeGuyInDC

"The sad thing is, this isn't the work of one misguided bureaucrat. The federal government doesn't work that way. At least a dozen people had to sign off for something like this to get up and running. At least a dozen taxpayer-paid DOE employees looked at the plan, nodded, and thought this was a good use of public funds."
--The Agitator