It's no secret that the late Sen. Ted Kennedy was a major obstacle to a proposed wind farm in Nantucket Sound, but Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin at least buried that fact in today's 18-paragraph page A6 story on the Obama administration approving the first offshore wind farm in the United States.
In the lead paragraph, Eilperin hailed the announcement by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar as "a move that could pave the way for significant offshore wind development elsewhere in the nation."
Yet Eilperin waited until the 14th paragraph to note that the project, "split the Democratic Party" when it was proposed in 2001 because Kennedy, "whose family compound overlooks the sound, fought it, with criticism of its aesthetics and its effects on fishing and boating."
Of course Eilperin devoted a significant part of her article to relaying the objections of other opponents of the Cape Wind project, liberal activists who tossed out the predictable boilerplate liberal invective against Big Business...:
"We will not stand by and allow our treasured public lands to be marred forever by a corporate giveaway to private industrial energy developers," said Audra Parker, president of the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound.
...or appealed to a perceived threat to wildlife...:
Michael Fry, conservation advocacy director for the American Bird Conservancy, said that the project could "reduce prime offshore sea-duck foraging habitat" and that data suggest "that loons will likely abandon the area for years to come, and there may be significant impacts to endangered roseate terns, which breed in nearby Buzzards Bay and feed in Nantucket Sound."
...or staked their opposition on ephemeral considerations such as "historical and cultural significance" of the Sound:
"No amount of mitigation will change the fact that this is a site of great historical and cultural significance for our tribe, and is inappropriate for this project," Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Chairman Cedric Cromwell said in a statement.
That sounds like a "hard line" from "special interests" to me. Just don't hold your breath for the liberal media to ever paint liberal activists in that manner.
