I think there is a line from the political satire comedy series Veep on HBO that answers your question nicely. It's a sage piece of advice offered to the Vice President from a Senator she's asking to help her with some PR on an Oil issue: "...you don’t want to fuck with [big oil] because they fuck in a very unpleasant fashion." It's a really well written (if extremely vulgar) show. Art imitates life, life imitates art, etc...