If the coal industry wants to win the American public over about coal use, maybe they could make political ads with a manufactured hip hop star named "Coalio", and he could rap all about the benefits of coal use. That would surely win over everyone to supporting coal, right? (No?) Well, it could, at least until people found out that he was a white rapper like Macklemore or Vanilla Ice, but all the coal dust makes him look black. Wow, then there would be a big blackface scandal, taking up a lion's share of news screen time, and another Republican Party tactic would bite the dust (after biting itself in the ass). And then coal would have another strike against it: it can be used for blackface. (Oh, the shame of it!)
Actually, coal makes miners look like they are wearing blackface whether they like it or not or even know it or not due to how dirty it is. (And it gives people black lung, too.) And these days people get a lot more worked up about things like blackface than they do about health problems or the environment, so maybe that ought to be the new reasoning and justification for trying to phase out or outright ban coal: it makes coal miners look offensive and stuff. (Political ads could claim coal is racist for giving coal miners blackface, and we must stamp out this overt racist behavior by coal, which clearly is only doing it to offend everyone.)
