Louisiana Governors: Crazier than Anyone Who's Better, Better than Anyone Who's Crazier

Earlier in the week, in the course of meeting a couple of new faces from the conservative blogosphere, I fell into a strange debate: who's crazier, Buddy Cianci or Marion Berry? The real answer, of course, is that either way nobody wins, but it was generally agreed that the name "Nancy Ann Cianci" (say it out loud) outweighs Berry's rhetoric, which was always very elegant. The bitch did set him up.

Still, as Robert Stacy McCain's reference to "a 'live boy/dead girl' scenario" reminds us, there is no state or city in America that can beat Louisiana for colorful and colorfully insane officeholders. There's Edwin Edwards, from whom the expression is taken; there's Huey Long and his still-crazier brother Earl; there's Singin' Jimmie Davis. All of them save Huey served multiple terms. (In other words, Bobby Jindal could challenge the demon soul of Mercedes McCambridge to an arm-wrestling match and still not make the crazy governor play-offs, so quit calling him an exorcist.)

Anyone with an interest in crazy politicians should read Earl of Louisiana, a collection of reports A. J. Liebling did for the New Yorker on Louisiana governor Earl Long in the late 1950's. To unpack the proper nouns in that sentence: the most so-phist-icated magazing in America sent a Jewish kid from Manhattan turned Francophile and gourmand to report on the recently institutionalized hick governor of a hick state. I'm not sure what they expected would happen; as it played out, Liebling and Long hit it off. Long extended to Liebling some Southern hospitality, possibly augmented by the natural sympathy that exists between men who like eating, drinking, and living well, and Liebling developed a great deal of respect for a figure he had been ready to cast as a demagogue and buffoon.

Another reason to pick up Earl of Louisiana: in chapter five, Liebling describes a local man's tone by saying, "Tom was about as neutral as a Louisianan can be during a primary fight, which is to say about as calm as a cat can stay with catnip under its nose." In the context of the rest of the book, this serves as a warning to those with a principled preference for more intense democratic engagement.

(The post's title is taken from a Liebling quote. My mother says I'm prettier than Jean Stafford.)