Mother Earth is Opening Up a Can of Whupass

It's almost cute:

"Earth Mother is fighting back -- not only from the four winds but also from underneath," he said. "Scientists call it global warming. We call it Earth Mother getting angry."

Native Americans are jumping on the everybody's-carbon-footprint-but-my-own bandwagon. My only wonder is why it took so long. Specifically, I've been waiting for the "crying Indian":

Those who study Native American culture believe their presence in the debate could be influential. They point to "The Crying Indian," one of the country's most influential public-service TV ads.

In the spot, actor Iron Eyes Cody, in a buckskin suit, paddles a canoe up a trash-strewn urban creek, then stands by a busy highway cluttered with litter. The ad ends with a close-up of Cody, shedding a single tear after a passing motorist throws trash at his feet.

Yes! Except of course, the crying "Indian" wasn't:

That "crying Indian," as he would later sometimes be referred to, was Iron Eyes Cody, an actor who throughout his life claimed to be of Cherokee/Cree extraction. Yet his asserted ancestry was just as artificial as the tear that rolled down his cheek in that television spot — the tear was glycerine, and the "Indian" a second-generation Italian-American.

How fitting. A faux crisis should be championed by a faux Indian.