Imagine being so mentally polluted (no pun intended) by your disdain for people who disagree with your climate fanaticism that you turn them into carbon footprint monsters in their obituaries? That’s exactly what leftist media outlets did writ large upon the passing of legendary former ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond.
Outlets like Bloomberg News, The New York Times, the Houston Chronicle and the Australia-based Sydney Morning Herald all took aim at Raymond following news of his death at age 87. They all turned Raymond into Mother Earth’s archnemesis by making him the face of Big Oil and the so-called climate change denier movement.
Some even went as far as to compare Raymond to one of the most notorious Sith Lord villains in Star Wars. Never mind that the “unrelenting” Raymond’s life could be seen as one of America’s great success stories in turning ExxonMobil into the world’s most profitable company for a time, as The Wall Street Journal highlighted. But when do we expect the lefty journalists to purely celebrate anything Americana?
Anyone gonna get an obit headline like "CEO Who Doubted Two Genders"? https://t.co/6uO3Sgafdc
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) June 11, 2026
Bloomberg News was arguably the worst offender, as reporters Joe Carroll and Kevin Crowley teed off their June 10 obituary coverage of Raymond in the lede paragraph with disgusting grave-stomping spin:
Lee Raymond, the former head of Exxon Mobil Corp. who oversaw the biggest corporate merger in the history of the oil industry and was derided as ‘the Darth Vader of global warming’ for his skepticism toward climate change, has died. He was 87.
“Darth Vader?” Really? Raymond is comparable to a Sith Lord who committed genocide against the Jedi during the tumult of Order 66 because he made an oil company successful? Carroll and Crowley’s headline for their pathetic excuse for an obituary was just as ridiculous: “Lee Raymond, Exxon CEO Who Doubted Climate Change, Dies at 87.”
It’s worth comparing Bloomberg News’s treatment of Raymond to how it honored some of society’s less respectable figureheads, to say the least. Consider its March 23 story headlined, “Leonid Radvinsky, Who Changed Porn With OnlyFans, Dies at 43.” That obituary was much friendlier to Radvinsky, despite the fact that he was instrumental in mainstreaming one of the most vile, pay-for-play sex schemes on the market:
Radvinsky bought a majority stake in the platform in 2018 and turned it into a cultural phenomenon that reshaped the pornography industry by allowing creators to charge directly for their content.
See the problem yet?
The Sydney Morning Herald actually managed to take it a step further by reposting Bloomberg News’s horrific obit and re-engineering it with a grotesque headline that made the “Darth Vader” moniker the centerpiece of Raymond’s story: “Exxon CEO Lee Raymond, the ‘Darth Vader of global warming’, dies at 87.” Sheesh, at least Carroll and Crowley buried the caricature in the lede paragraph.
The Houston Chronicle was no better, running a screed on Raymond June 10 headlined, “Lee Raymond, former Exxon CEO who denied climate change, dies at 87, WSJ reports.” Staff Writer Ashley Soebroto seethed that Raymond “a key target of the #ExxonKnew movement, which highlighted how the corporation ignored the impact of carbon dioxide on global warming.” Yes, “Carbon dioxide” as in the gas that trees rely on to produce oxygen, which practically every species needs to survive. Soebroto continued her smear, “Searches of Exxon Mobil's archives showed company leaders knew of the risks and downplayed them, the Chronicle reported previously.”
The New York Times writer James Hagerty attempted to be subtle by making his headline appear straight, only to then skewer Raymond in his subheadline: “He oversaw Exxon’s acquisition of a rival, cut costs relentlessly and denied the scientific consensus on climate change.” Hagerty then went gloves off! and went on the offensive against Raymond’s corpse:
Lee R. Raymond, who as chief executive of Exxon Mobil wrung out costs to make that global oil company the most profitable in its industry while stoutly resisting the scientific consensus that burning fossil fuels was causing a potentially disastrous warming of the Earth, died on Saturday in Dallas. He was 87.
The body isn’t even cold yet, guys! Is it possible to hold off on the rabid editorializing for a bit, or is even that asking too much?
