longism

Richard D White has a new book out about Huey Long, the Lousiana governor who got rid of old corruption by replacing it with newer, better corruption.

His brother Earl, who was guv after Long's assassination, said, "Someday Louisiana is going to get good government. And when they do, they ain't going to like it." That's the Earl Long who in the fifties got on live TV and then started spouting obscenities. His wife (Blanche, for those keeping track of the Southern name index) responded by having him committed to a sanatorium. How did he get out? By firing the superintendent, who was after all a state employee.

Ahh, politics!

Meanwhile, there's an operatic irony behind Huey Long's death that I've never heard played up. It turns out that he probably wasn't shot by his assassin. The most plausible version of events says that his guards, in defending him, let loose a stray bullet that wounded him. The wound wasn't immediately fatal; he went to a hospital where he died two days later, after a doctor, the hospital's chief of surgery, botched the simple operations required to save him. Long, who notoriously appointed people to high positions based on loyalty rather than competence, had installed the doctor only a few years before.