Big Oil Hijacked ‘Landman’ for Its Propaganda

I wasn’t planning on writing about the hit TV show Landman, about a Texas oil man, mainly because I haven’t actually, how do you say, watched it. That seems like kind of a prerequisite. But Landman keeps demanding attention — especially now that Big Oil has glommed on to it.

Last year, during Landman’s first season, I felt compelled to record a video response to a clip from the show that garnered more than a million YouTube views and was being celebrated on Fox News and other conservative outlets. The clip is a crotchety rant by the titular oil man, played by Billy Bob Thornton, about the supposed ills of renewable energy. It’s filled to the brim with misleading nonsense. It wasn’t shocking that a fictional oil man would have aggressively incorrect thoughts about wind turbines. But it was surprising, and kind of alarming, how deeply his three minutes of misinformation seemed to resonate.