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Dr. Carl A. Weiss Jr. died on August 1, 2019. It’s not typically considered newsworthy by the New York Times when a retired orthopedic surgeon passes away at the age of 84, but Weiss was more than a physician. He was the son of the man who shot Huey P. Long.Or so we were taught. As a child growing up in Louisiana in the 1990s, I learned that there was absolutely no doubt that in the 1930s, the state’s best governor and all-around great man died at the hands of a political opponent out for blood. That story, like so much about Long, is a lie.The myth of Long’s assassination is just one in a long line of tales meant to lionize the former governor and U.S. senator, painting over his lengthy track record of corruption and brutality in his pursuit for power. Huey P. Long, historian Arthur Schlesinger explained in a 1986 Ken Burns documentary about the populist politician, was the closest thing to a dictator the U.S. has ever seen . . .. . . Many Louisianans have instead chosen to remember Long as the flamboyant politician who gave pencils to poor schoolchildren and built sparkling new bridges across the waterways of the swampy state. Some fetishize his authoritarian regime as the zaniest chapter in Louisiana’s colorful history, ignoring the long-term damage he caused in both governance and reputation to the state . . .. . . His supporters, then as now, happily overlooked his tremendous moral failings and their institutional consequences for Louisiana because he supposedly fought for the common man . . . Though many people were hurt at the hands of Long and his cronies, perhaps none suffered more gravely than the Pavy and Weiss families. Benjamin Pavy was an anti-Longite judge in St. Landry Parish whose judicial district Long gerrymandered in hopes of preventing him from winning reelection. Judge Pavy had planned to retire, but for insurance, Long allegedly began spreading a rumor that Pavy had “Negro blood,†hoping to delegitimize him in the eyes of voters.On September 8, 1935, Long was making the rounds at the Louisiana state capitol in Baton Rouge, a regular occurrence for the then–U.S. senator who still maintained total control of the state, both through a constant physical presence and by extension through his vast network of political cronies working on his behalf. Dr. Carl Weiss, Sr., a 29-year-old physician married to Judge Pavy’s daughter, lived near the capitol and decided to confront Long after wrapping up his house calls for the day . . .
Seems like there are an entire slew of "Long-wannabes" jostling for the democrat-communist nomination to become the next president (or king?)...
