Watching BP’s constant stream of TV ads, touting its hand in a great tourist season along the Gulf Coast, is like fingernails on a chalkboard for people who understand the facts.

So I was very please to see David Yarnold’s editorial posted Friday on the Huffington Post website. Yarnold is president of the National Audubon Society. He calls BP’s ads a “slick propaganda campaign” that uses likable employees as spokespeople.

And the following needs to go out to everyone exposed to these ads:

Yarnold notes the “BP oil and the dispersants applied in unprecedented quantities have done mortal damage. The spill has killed areas of deep-sea coral, led to the deaths of bottlenose dolphins, harmed plankton (a vital link in the ocean food chain), decimated bird nesting habitat, poisoned endangered sea turtles and accelerated marsh erosion in a place where every inch of wetland is a precious barrier to sea level rise. Commercial seafood species are still in trouble. In some areas, oyster beds have yet to recover, and shrimpers are reporting shrimp without eyeballs and fish covered in red lesions.”

Somehow, I missed these facts in the BP propaganda ads. The Gulf Coast and its marine wildlife and ecosystem are still feeling the adverse impacts of the BP Gulf Oil Gusher. The propaganda – the “hey, everything’s great here” – is nothing short of disgusting.

The very company that bares the most responsibility for the disaster is trying to bill itself as a hero. And they can do it only because they are swimming in huge profits and can buy as much in the way of TV air time as the CEO wants.

The dead and injured and suffering wildlife don’t have a dime to buy a millisecond of ad time.