Since this blog’s current subtitle (subject to change) implies that I’ll be writing about “pop culture, accountants, and magical horned creatures”, and since the number-crunchers at Google and Microsoft in my last post are more or less accountants, then that means I’ve been unfairly neglecting the magical horned creatures section of this website for the last two weeks. In an effort to ameliorate this journalistic travesty, I now present the first of what might become a multipart series:
Meet A Magical Horned Creature!
Where I’ll try and introduce you to a new magical horned creature, either real or fictional, in each installment. Disclaimer: just because you can’t see the horns doesn’t mean they’re not there.
This Week: Huey Long!
Admittedly, this guy’s horns were pretty discreet. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t magical. He was a crazy ass mofo with a congruously silly name, who you might remember in your U.S. History classes as the governor of Louisiana who nicknamed himself "The Kingfish".
He was self-conscious about his horns, so he Photoshopped them out.
Why, though, of all the magical horned creatures to talk about, did I choose him? Well, first and foremost because his name is pretty funny. And also, because I’ve been poring through The Glory and the Dream by William Manchester, a densely-packed, fifteen-hundred-page narrative history of America from 1932-1972. It’s like the Lord of the Rings of U.S. History, the ultimate combination of length, detail, and utter confusion, though unfortunately without attractive elves or talking trees. Anyways, I ran into Huey (his full name is actually Huey, not Hubert) a few chapters ago, and though this entire section of the book is overshadowed by the awesomeness known as Franklin Roosevelt, Huey still managed to stick out like a hobbit in the NBA, a small but hilarious gem floundering around in a sea of giants. Here’s a brief synopsis of his life:
Huey Long was born in 1893, in Winnfield, Louisiana, and it didn’t take him long afterwards to realize how baller he was. He was an excellent student in high school, so excellent, in fact, that he ended up getting tired of his principal and circulated a petition to get him fired. Huey was promptly expelled, but somehow still managed to win a debating scholarship to Louisiana State University.
The scholarship apparently didn’t cover textbooks that Huey couldn’t afford, so he dropped out of school almost immediately. After living an unglamorous life as a travelling salesman for a few years, however, Huey then felt that his career choices might broaden if he attended law school. So he enrolled at Tulane Law School, but instead of spending the typical three years there, he took classes for eight months, convinced the board to let him take the Louisiana State Bar, and passed. He became a lawyer at the age of twenty-one, an achievement that, apparently, had never and has since never been repeated in the state’s history.
He ran for governor twice, in 1924, where he lost, and 1928, where he won. He was always a champion of the poor, as his campaign slogan was “every man a king, but no man wears a crown”. His Share the Wealth program was American socialism at its finest (or worst), and he subsequently ravaged large corporations as governor. He collected enough taxes from the rich to expand the state’s infrastructure from thirty miles of paved roads to 2,500, zero large bridges to twelve. He opened up night schools to teach 175,000 illiterate adults how to read, and mind you, this was all during the worst part of the Great Depression.
How did Huey do all this? Well don’t forget this man was crazy. Throughout his stint as governor from 1928 to 1932, and later as Senator from 1932 to 1935, he centralized Louisiana’s government to revolve around, well, himself. All police departments reported directly to him. He bribed all the judges in the state, including the Louisiana Supreme Court justices; those who wouldn’t comply with his demands were removed through underhanded tactics like district gerrymandering or brute force. Newspaper critics who angered him were often beaten, kidnapped, and jailed. Right before his Senate election, Huey’s secretary’s husband threatened to sue Huey for “alienation of affections”, a.k.a. fucking his wife. And you know what Huey did in response? He flew the man up on a plane, waited until the election polls closed, and then had him brought back down. I have no idea how Huey managed to get him onto the plane in the first place, but I assume it was something along the lines of a free vacation to the Caribbean.
How I assume Huey convinced his secretary's husband
to get on an unexplained flight.
Huey then planned on moving into the White House with the election of 1936, but thankfully he was shot the year before. I say “thankfully” because otherwise he really might have won and turned the country into a communistic monarchy, or something. Capitalism was saved, FDR could continue his million years as president, and men everywhere could go back to work comfortable in the knowledge that Huey Long was no longer out seducing their wives.
Before I conclude, however, there’s one more anecdote that I think is worthy of mentioning. Huey, being the only Southern governor who treated blacks as equals during the 1930s, was immensely unpopular with the growing Ku Klux Klan. When the KKK’s leader threatened to come into Louisiana and march/protest/campaign against him, he replied with the following, which I think is much more potently demonstrated by a bad illustration:
He gets baller status in my book.
Magical Horned Creature Rating: 5 (+1 for being nonfictional)
(On a scale of 1-10: 1 being a rhinoceros, 10 being a unicorn)
Meet A Magical Horned Creature!
Where I’ll try and introduce you to a new magical horned creature, either real or fictional, in each installment. Disclaimer: just because you can’t see the horns doesn’t mean they’re not there.
This Week: Huey Long!
Admittedly, this guy’s horns were pretty discreet. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t magical. He was a crazy ass mofo with a congruously silly name, who you might remember in your U.S. History classes as the governor of Louisiana who nicknamed himself "The Kingfish".
He was self-conscious about his horns, so he Photoshopped them out.
Why, though, of all the magical horned creatures to talk about, did I choose him? Well, first and foremost because his name is pretty funny. And also, because I’ve been poring through The Glory and the Dream by William Manchester, a densely-packed, fifteen-hundred-page narrative history of America from 1932-1972. It’s like the Lord of the Rings of U.S. History, the ultimate combination of length, detail, and utter confusion, though unfortunately without attractive elves or talking trees. Anyways, I ran into Huey (his full name is actually Huey, not Hubert) a few chapters ago, and though this entire section of the book is overshadowed by the awesomeness known as Franklin Roosevelt, Huey still managed to stick out like a hobbit in the NBA, a small but hilarious gem floundering around in a sea of giants. Here’s a brief synopsis of his life:
Huey Long was born in 1893, in Winnfield, Louisiana, and it didn’t take him long afterwards to realize how baller he was. He was an excellent student in high school, so excellent, in fact, that he ended up getting tired of his principal and circulated a petition to get him fired. Huey was promptly expelled, but somehow still managed to win a debating scholarship to Louisiana State University.
The scholarship apparently didn’t cover textbooks that Huey couldn’t afford, so he dropped out of school almost immediately. After living an unglamorous life as a travelling salesman for a few years, however, Huey then felt that his career choices might broaden if he attended law school. So he enrolled at Tulane Law School, but instead of spending the typical three years there, he took classes for eight months, convinced the board to let him take the Louisiana State Bar, and passed. He became a lawyer at the age of twenty-one, an achievement that, apparently, had never and has since never been repeated in the state’s history.
He ran for governor twice, in 1924, where he lost, and 1928, where he won. He was always a champion of the poor, as his campaign slogan was “every man a king, but no man wears a crown”. His Share the Wealth program was American socialism at its finest (or worst), and he subsequently ravaged large corporations as governor. He collected enough taxes from the rich to expand the state’s infrastructure from thirty miles of paved roads to 2,500, zero large bridges to twelve. He opened up night schools to teach 175,000 illiterate adults how to read, and mind you, this was all during the worst part of the Great Depression.
How did Huey do all this? Well don’t forget this man was crazy. Throughout his stint as governor from 1928 to 1932, and later as Senator from 1932 to 1935, he centralized Louisiana’s government to revolve around, well, himself. All police departments reported directly to him. He bribed all the judges in the state, including the Louisiana Supreme Court justices; those who wouldn’t comply with his demands were removed through underhanded tactics like district gerrymandering or brute force. Newspaper critics who angered him were often beaten, kidnapped, and jailed. Right before his Senate election, Huey’s secretary’s husband threatened to sue Huey for “alienation of affections”, a.k.a. fucking his wife. And you know what Huey did in response? He flew the man up on a plane, waited until the election polls closed, and then had him brought back down. I have no idea how Huey managed to get him onto the plane in the first place, but I assume it was something along the lines of a free vacation to the Caribbean.
How I assume Huey convinced his secretary's husband
to get on an unexplained flight.
Huey then planned on moving into the White House with the election of 1936, but thankfully he was shot the year before. I say “thankfully” because otherwise he really might have won and turned the country into a communistic monarchy, or something. Capitalism was saved, FDR could continue his million years as president, and men everywhere could go back to work comfortable in the knowledge that Huey Long was no longer out seducing their wives.
Before I conclude, however, there’s one more anecdote that I think is worthy of mentioning. Huey, being the only Southern governor who treated blacks as equals during the 1930s, was immensely unpopular with the growing Ku Klux Klan. When the KKK’s leader threatened to come into Louisiana and march/protest/campaign against him, he replied with the following, which I think is much more potently demonstrated by a bad illustration:
He gets baller status in my book.
Magical Horned Creature Rating: 5 (+1 for being nonfictional)
(On a scale of 1-10: 1 being a rhinoceros, 10 being a unicorn)
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