Oily

I've always been puzzled by the metaphor of "Big Oil," as if the complex oil market can be reduced to a simple darkened boardroom where white men with handlebar moustaches conspire to raise profits.

Back when Ida Tarbel was writing, said conspiracy actually existed, and yet I bet she managed to avoid ever putting the adjective "big" next to the noun "oil."

In fact, the cliches in both of these ads are maddening. "Played political games." No one talks that way! Aaaah.

Here's Clinton's ad.

Here's Obama's response.

Comments

Without cheap oil, how are we going to manufacture Vaseline, let alone KY Jelly?

Posted by D | April 10, 2008 3:41 PM

This is the kind of post that makes me wonder things like whether or not Marc actually knows what a "metaphor" is, and whether or not he knows much about American history.

Anyway, I'm not sure when that particular term was first used, but its origin comes from period after the Civil War during which there was large-scale consolidation in industries like steel, oil, and so on, leading to the creation of a few very large companies that dominated their respective industries.

Hence the adjective "big", for these very large companies, and the noun "oil" (or "steel", or so on), for the industry they dominated.

Posted by DTM | April 10, 2008 4:16 PM

I don't know. The oil industry is pretty consolidated. Sure, some of the biggest companies (Royal Dutch, BP) are foreign, but Exxon, Conoco, Chevron et al are very big and the CEOs know each other, go to conferences together, and participate in various lobbying enterprises like the American Petroleum Institute (home to some of the best scientists money can buy).

While the oil industry is indeed "complicated" it's not as though there aren't certain policies which are good for all oil companies and some which are bad for all of them. It's not a conspiracy theory to point out that they spend a lot of money, often collectively, in support of the former. And "Big Oil" is not especially misleading shorthand.

Posted by lowellfield | April 10, 2008 6:41 PM