You know you are doing a bad job of public relations when Hugo Chavez makes you look bad. The big oil companies are recording record profits while we are all living with $ 3.00 a gallon gas prices. I can understand the arguments on both sides of the equation in terms of whether the oil companies are simply reaping the rewards of their investments and leveraging the laws of supply and demand or whether they are greedily gouging the public and taking advantage of the current market conditions that are for the moment tilted strongly in their favor.
What I cannot understand is how the big oil companies are letting a 2-bit despot like Hugo Chavez make them look bad. While the US oil companies are busy tallying their current quarterly earnings, Chavez has, with the help of several empty-headed US celebrities, won a public relations coup by being the only big oil company giving away heating oil to low income citizens of the United States! How bad must one be at public relations to get body slammed by a money grabbing, property seizing, election fixing commie?
I do not think that anyone is "owed" heating oil and I certainly do not want the US government in the oil distribution business even if it is for low income families. However, just how obtuse are the executives at Texaco, Exxon-Mobil, and Aamaco for missing an opportunity to make their companies look good, help some people who need it, and create a general image of big oil as a good corporate citizen at a time when everyone and their Aunt Tillie is pissed about the price of gasoline? If anyone ever had an underhanded beach ball pitched to them just waiting to be knocked out of the park this is the chance. All I see is the big oil fat cats getting fatter, while Hugo Chavez takes a handoff from dumb-ass Sean Penn and does an end-run on them. Sometimes I wonder how these guys ever find their way to the office in the morning.
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