"Uncle Earl"
The colorful "Uncle Earl" (so-named because of his relatives, including nephew and U.S. Senator Russell Long) once joked that one day the people of Louisiana would elect "good government, and they won't like it!" Beneath his public persona as a simple, plain-spoken rural Louisianan of little education was an astute political mind of considerable intelligence. Earl Long was a master campaigner, who attracted large crowds when his campaign caravan crisscrossed the state. He would not allow a local person to introduce him or his ticket mates at a rally. Only out-of-parish people could do the honor. Long reasoned that nearly any local person would have made some political enemies who might reject Earl Long just because that person's "enemy" was pro-Long. Long was determined to get every vote possible even if that meant forbidding the local leadership to introduce him when he came to town on a campaign swing.
Read more about this topic: Earl Long
Famous quotes containing the words uncle and/or earl:
“Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle;
I am no traitor’s uncle, and that word “grace”
In an ungracious mouth is but profane.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Without any extraordinary effort of genius, I have discovered that nature was the same three thousand years ago as at present; that men were but men then as well as now; that modes and customs vary often, but that human nature is always the same. And I can no more suppose, that men were better, braver, or wiser, fifteen hundred or three thousand years ago, than I can suppose that the animals or vegetables were better than they are now.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)