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Rupert Murdoch Is Against the Keystone XL Pipeline

And Republicans and environmentalists are all WTFing all over the place.

The more time you spend on the internet, the lower its capacity to genuinely surprise you. This proportional relationship explains why nearly every WTF you read in a headline or in a blog post was either typed by a fresh-out-of college intern or is a bold-faced all-caps lie.

So when a tweet or post carries with it the genuine ability to inspire an actual, primordial WTF in a seasoned blogger, it is worth examining for a second or two. As evidence, I submit Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corp. and Fox News, tweeting out his opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline.

Is Keystone Pipeline really good idea? Bringing lots of heavy, dirty oil across country, when fracked ,cheaper, cleaner energy available

— Rupert Murdoch(@rupertmurdoch) February 15, 2013

If context is needed, it is this: Opposing the Keystone XL, a pipeline that would carry inordinately dirty tar sands oil from Canada to Texas, is currently the environmentalists' top cause celebre. Concurrently, Fox News is the pipeline's biggest cheerleader in the media.

Murdoch, it should be noted, has broken orthodoxy with Fox ideology before—he is an avowed believer in climate change, for instance, and has instituted programs to lower the studio's carbon footprint behind the scenes. But he rarely plays politics like this, especially in such a flagrantly contradictory manner.

In a subsequent tweet, Murdoch said that the Keystone XL was "not needed for energy independence." Roger Ailes' head must have exploded when the tweet rolled down his feed. O'Reilly spat out his coffee. Hannity maybe actually shit himself There are fewer issues as starkly divided across partisan lines as the Keystone XL—even some conservative Democrats support it. So when the head of the most vocally oppositional, Republican pandering-est media organ in all the land launches a tweet like that, yep, that's a WTF.