Ny bog om Texas's største oliebaroner, deres op- og nedture og deres indflydelse på amerikansk politik. Bogen hedder "The Big Rich" og er skrevet af Bryan Burrough fra Vanity Fair.
Læs bl.a. om hvordan man taler til direktøren for FBI, hvis man har penge nok.
Uddrag: "But in their [oliebaronernes] time they were giants to be reckoned with, and poked fun at, and ultimately held up as examples of how not to be rich, and so when somebody--especially somebody who writes for Vanity Fair--puts out a book called The Big Rich it's perfectly reasonable to suspect it's going to be another hatchet job on folks who had the good luck to make a little money in the awl bidness but were unlucky enough to hail from Texas--yep, that Texas: nemesis of labor unions, wolfsbane of (gasp) income taxes, and home of the dreaded Dubya.
Naturally, this reviewer's suspicions were correct. The author exposes the Big Rich for what they were, which in most cases was grasping, inept, bigger-than-life parvenus who didn't dress for dinner or talk like Cary Grant, and if they ever tried to light a lady's cigarette, they'd probably set her hair on fire. But since the author is Bryan Burrough, whose venerable Barbarians at the Gate earns him legitimate credentials, let's see what it's all about.
Meet, for instance, H. L. Hunt, serial bigamist, professional gambler, and, for a while, the richest man on earth, whom even William F. Buckley Jr. said "gave capitalism a bad name"; Hugh Roy Cullen, another World's Richest Man, fifth-grade dropout, geologic genius, and "Faulkneresque figure in a white summer suit, who detested 'Communists,' 'pinkos,' and especially Roosevelt." Then there was Sid Richardson, one more billionaire wildcatter who, "a few days before Christmas 1955 . . . flew to Washington in one of his DC-3s laden with steaks, quail, and ducks" for his pal President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in an effort to persuade him to drop Richard Nixon as his vice president in favor of one of Big Oil's closer friends."
Og:
"As might be expected, that kind of money wielded enormous political power, and not just in Texas; then congressman Lyndon Johnson was bought and sold by Texas Big Oil, a feat that was apparently not so hard to accomplish. Likewise, in the days before campaign finance reform, Dwight Eisenhower owed a great deal to Big Oil, in particular from investing in wells drilled by his new best friend Sid Richardson. [...] It was apparently the same with J. Edgar Hoover, who invested in wells drilled by Clint Murchison. Murchison, however, was not sufficiently awed by Hoover to keep him from expressing himself when the opportunity arose. On one of Hoover's free visits to his Hotel Del Charro, the FBI director was seated quietly beside the buffet while Murchison had drunk just enough bourbon to suddenly turn to his guest and shout at him in front of the entire poolside crowd, "Goddamnit, Hoover, get your ass out of that chair and get me another bowl of chili!"
I anmeldelsen kan man også læse om nogle af oliebaronernes forbrug af sex, alkohol og stoffer, forsøg på snigmord og deres forhold til Sen. Joe McCarthy.
Læs bl.a. om hvordan man taler til direktøren for FBI, hvis man har penge nok.
Uddrag: "But in their [oliebaronernes] time they were giants to be reckoned with, and poked fun at, and ultimately held up as examples of how not to be rich, and so when somebody--especially somebody who writes for Vanity Fair--puts out a book called The Big Rich it's perfectly reasonable to suspect it's going to be another hatchet job on folks who had the good luck to make a little money in the awl bidness but were unlucky enough to hail from Texas--yep, that Texas: nemesis of labor unions, wolfsbane of (gasp) income taxes, and home of the dreaded Dubya.
Naturally, this reviewer's suspicions were correct. The author exposes the Big Rich for what they were, which in most cases was grasping, inept, bigger-than-life parvenus who didn't dress for dinner or talk like Cary Grant, and if they ever tried to light a lady's cigarette, they'd probably set her hair on fire. But since the author is Bryan Burrough, whose venerable Barbarians at the Gate earns him legitimate credentials, let's see what it's all about.
Meet, for instance, H. L. Hunt, serial bigamist, professional gambler, and, for a while, the richest man on earth, whom even William F. Buckley Jr. said "gave capitalism a bad name"; Hugh Roy Cullen, another World's Richest Man, fifth-grade dropout, geologic genius, and "Faulkneresque figure in a white summer suit, who detested 'Communists,' 'pinkos,' and especially Roosevelt." Then there was Sid Richardson, one more billionaire wildcatter who, "a few days before Christmas 1955 . . . flew to Washington in one of his DC-3s laden with steaks, quail, and ducks" for his pal President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in an effort to persuade him to drop Richard Nixon as his vice president in favor of one of Big Oil's closer friends."
Og:
"As might be expected, that kind of money wielded enormous political power, and not just in Texas; then congressman Lyndon Johnson was bought and sold by Texas Big Oil, a feat that was apparently not so hard to accomplish. Likewise, in the days before campaign finance reform, Dwight Eisenhower owed a great deal to Big Oil, in particular from investing in wells drilled by his new best friend Sid Richardson. [...] It was apparently the same with J. Edgar Hoover, who invested in wells drilled by Clint Murchison. Murchison, however, was not sufficiently awed by Hoover to keep him from expressing himself when the opportunity arose. On one of Hoover's free visits to his Hotel Del Charro, the FBI director was seated quietly beside the buffet while Murchison had drunk just enough bourbon to suddenly turn to his guest and shout at him in front of the entire poolside crowd, "Goddamnit, Hoover, get your ass out of that chair and get me another bowl of chili!"
I anmeldelsen kan man også læse om nogle af oliebaronernes forbrug af sex, alkohol og stoffer, forsøg på snigmord og deres forhold til Sen. Joe McCarthy.
