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That’s the theory put forth by Laurie David in the Washington Post, describing how the National Science Teachers Association rejected an offer to send 50,000 free copies of Al Gore’s shockumentary to schools. The NSTA claimed that it didn’t want to distribute materials from “special interests” and besides, the film offered “little, if any, benefit to NSTA or its members.” And, oh yeah—it might tick off the global-warming deniers at Exxon:

But there was one more curious argument in the e-mail: Accepting the DVDs, they wrote, would place “unnecessary risk upon the [NSTA] capital campaign, especially certain targeted supporters.” One of those supporters, it turns out, is the Exxon Mobil Corp.

That’s the same Exxon Mobil that for more than a decade has done everything possible to muddle public understanding of global warming and stifle any serious effort to solve it.

While the NSTA won’t distribute science-based documentaries like Gore’s, it does promote curricula from companies including Exxon:

And it has been doing so for longer than you may think. NSTA says it has received $6 million from the company since 1996, mostly for the association’s “Building a Presence for Science” program, an electronic networking initiative intended to “bring standards-based teaching and learning” into schools, according to the NSTA Web site. Exxon Mobil has a representative on the group’s corporate advisory board. And in 2003, NSTA gave the company an award for its commitment to science education.

So much for special interests and implicit endorsements.

Exxon may be funding more than just innocuous science materials. Laurie reports that its free lesson plans for teachers include “propaganda challenging global warming.”