Hollywood

Daniel Day Lewis just won an Oscar for his performance the embodiment of greed in There Will Be Blood. His character, Daniel Plainview, is a ruthless, scheming, tooth sucking, over-the-top wanna-be oil tycoon who kills to turn the dry hills of California into his personal bank account. He is exactly the kind of greedy oil baron Americans have loved to hate since John D. Rockefeller first landed in the Pennsylvania oil fields in the 1860’s. Everyone who sees the movie leaves the theatre convinced that what'’s wrong with us is greed, and oil is a metaphor for that.

I loved this movie (particularly the way it shows crude oil rocketing out of the ground) but I don’t think greed is the problem— -- it’'s the answer.

American voters and politicians buy into the greed and oil myth, but with a twist: We'’re happiest when we’re condemning the greed and taking the oil. Everyone from Pelosi to Huckabee has trotted out the “"G-word"” when discussing high gas prices. (In 2006, Bush coyly referred to “illegal manipulation or cheating.) But I think the tycoon story is pretty much dead. If we’'re going to deal with the current problems of oil— -- high prices, smog, greenhouse gases, geopolitical problems, traffic jams -- we’re going to need to ditch the oil and embrace the greed.