Review: The Big Rich by Bryan Burrough

Burrough concentrates on the Big Four families of oil: the Cullens in Houston, the combined Richardson and Bass families in Fort Worth and the Hunts and Murchisons from Dallas. Plenty of books have been written about these people before. Indeed, many of the stories of excess are probably familiar to Texans: how hard-living Houston wildcatter Glenn McCarthy became the inspiration for the James Dean character in the movie Giant, how Clint Murchison, Jr., brought the Cowboys to Dallas, how H. L. Hunt maintained not one, not two, but three different families and how his son Nelson tried to corner the silver market for his own strange reasons and just about wrecked his inheritance.

But Burrough is very good at finding new links between these stories, putting them into larger contexts. He's also good at digging through old court records and presidential papers. He wants to provide a more nuanced, longer-timespan portrait of these men than the usual "rampant vulgarians" that's been popular -- although what he writes is still plenty dark.

Texas oil helped shape our modern world. Texas oil money, Burrough argues, helped shape modern American politics, especially the part about briefcases full of cash being delivered in the dead of night. Texas oil didn't start that particular game, but it took it to the Super Bowl. The contributions ballooned. As early as 1952, the biggest single donor in the presidential election was Texas oilman Roy Cullen.

And his money -- unlike that of many Texans then -- went to the Republican Party. According to Burrough, Texas oil money helped bankroll the modern conservative movement -- and, one might add, helped swing Texas and much of the country into the Republican electoral roster for much of the past 30 years. William F. Buckley, to give a single example, inspired conservatives with his magazine, National Review. Despite his air of being born at Yale, Buckley was the son of a Texas oil millionaire (that didn't help him get any money out of Hunt, though).

Many of the Texas oilmen were diehard anti-Semites and old-school Southern segregationists. And when they bolted the Democratic party, first for the Dixiecrats and then for the Republicans, they brought their angry, combative politics with them. Texas oil millionaires helped make Joseph McCarthy and his Red-baiting fury a national force. They fought civil rlghts legislation that would have made lynching a federal crime.  H. L. Hunt syndicated a radio program across the country in which, when not pitching his diet products, he argued that rich people who pay more taxes should have more votes. Burrough even sees some of the oil men's early media efforts as attempts to create something along the lines of what would follow much later: FOX News.

And over time, even as they preached their ideas of small government and free markets, Texas oil men used their backroom influence to stifle competition and snag tremendous federal benefits for themselves. Some, especially Murchison, didn't really seem to care which party was in power, as long as the politicians delivered what he needed.

Burrrough (right) argues that all this is why -- when John F. Kennedy was assassinated -- many Americans were already prepared to think the worst of Dallas.

ButThe Big Rich is hardly a political indictment. It's a multi-generational, multi-family saga that traces the transformation of these fortunes. It's a transformation from nouveau riche wildness to establishment power (or decline) that Burrough is actually wistful about. And it's a long enough transformation that it causes his book to skip and drag towards the end.

Simply put, vulgar, hard-drinking Texas oil millionaires ain't what they used to be. The heirs of these first headstrong eccentrics, conservative radicals and near-geniuses grew careless or carefree and frittered away their fortunes. Or they became more corporate, their politics turned more careful, more mainstream. And having helped shape presidents from Johnson through Reagan, they finally gained the White House with some of their own: the Bushes.

in the end, Texas oil men gave our culture a new icon to stand next to the cowboy: the rootin-tootin, high-livin' rich guy from the Lone Star State. From Giant to J. R. Ewing, it was always a cartoon, a condescending one, as Burrough notes.

But once upon a time, it seemed an innocent, fun-loving cartoon.

Once again, this review can be found at Artandseek.org, complete with the audio version and a radio interview with Bryan Burrough.