One morning last week the New York Herald Tribune published a cartoon by Jay ("Ding"') Darling captioned "The Fates Are Funny That Way." It pictured a wreck at a railway crossing ("36,000 Die in Auto Crashes Every Year!"); a scene in an operating room (''Prominent Senator Succumbs to Emergency Operation!"); a street accident ("Pedestrian Killed Crossing Street!"); a row of dead lying beside a table ("Poison Food Kills 469 at Old Settlers' Picnic!"); a volcano erupting ("Earthquakes, Floods, Cancer and Pestilence Kill Thousands Every Day!"). Beneath this billboard of horrors appeared a citizen, newspaper in hand, turning to his wife exclaiming: "But nothing ever seems to happen to Huey Long!"
Three days later in Baton Rouge something very serious happened to Huey Long. The seventh special session of Louisiana's Legislature was just getting down to the business of rubberstamping 39 bills devised by the Senator to tighten his one-man dictatorship over the State. On the floor there had been the customary brawling and cursing as the "Kingfish" strutted up & down the aisle giving orders to his henchmen. As the Legislature adjourned for the night, Senator Long marched out of the chamber and started down the corridor to Governor Allen's office, flanked, as always, by his bodyguards. A young man in a white suit, lurking in a corner, stepped out into the Senator's path, shoved a small revolver against his right side, pulled the trigger. There was a muffled explosion. One of the Long bodyguards grappled with the assassin. He fired again, searing the bodyguard's thumb. Then the young man in the white suit went down under a rain of submachine gun bullets.
Senator Long clapped his hand to his side, staggered down the corridor. Attracted by the crackle of gunfire, friends rushed forward, carried the wounded "Kingfish" out a rear door, put him into a car, started for Our Lady of the Lake Hospital. On the way Huey Long held his hand to his bleeding side, spoke only once: "I wonder why he did it."
Why a 29-year-old doctor named Carl Austin Weiss Jr. did it seemed fairly plain to local newshawks. Young Dr. Weiss, a Tulane Medical School graduate who practiced with his father in Baton Rouge, had married Miss Louise Yvonne Pavy. Mrs. Weiss was the daughter of Circuit Judge B. H. Pavy, a rabid anti-Longster in St. Landry Parish. One of the 39 bills up for passage by the Legislature was to gerrymander Judge Pavy's judicial district in such a way as to effect his ouster. Brooding darkly on this piece of petty politics, Carl Weiss apparently thought he was doing his father-in-law a favor by taking a potshot at Boss Long.