When Billy Carter showed up in Boston to pick a winner in the Miss Piggy's Pizza Beauty Pageant, a woman reporter asked him: "Is there anything you won't do for money?" "Yes," cracked the President's brother, "but if you proposition me, I'll do it for free." Next question: "How much money are you being paid to be here?" Answer (amiably): "That ain't none of your damned business."
Actually, Billy Carter's honorarium these days runs between $5,000 and $10,000, depending on how badly a promoter wants him to show up. For such fees, Billy has presented the Golden Ratchet Award to a winning team of auto mechanics and lent his sudsy presence to the Annual World Belly Flop and Cannonball Diving Championship in Vancouver. This week he travels to Ohio for the U.S. Peanut Olympics, which involves a shelling contest and other hilarities. A line of Billy posters, T shirts and belt buckles is going on the market. California's Revell Inc. is manufacturing a model Billy Carter Redneck Power Pickup Truck. Billy has appeared at Manhattan's "21" Club to push a peanut liqueur, and a Kentucky brewer is bringing out a new brand called Billy Beer, which the First Brother will hawk on TV. He has forsaken the family's peanut warehouse business, but stands to earn some $500,000 this year from his various promotions and ventures. He could make more, but as his Nashville agent Tandy Rice explains, presumably with a straight face, 95% of the proffered business deals have been rejected as being "too flippant."
Never in U.S. history has a presidential relative engaged in such aggressively crass exploitation of a genetic coincidence. A couple of F.D.R.'s sons displayed a peculiar, almost prurient interest in their parents' personal lives, but only in books published long after Franklin and Eleanor had died. Margaret Truman's singing career might not have occurred without a father in the White House, but she earned painfully mixed reviews from it. F. Donald Nixon engaged in some murky financing on the strength of his brother's name.
Billy, on the other hand, has pursued his lucrative celebrity with such up-front good ole boy's cupidity that his ventures seem quite innocent—especially after Watergate. Critics quick to seize upon any hinted impropriety around a President have laughed off Billy. No one has to suspect Billy of anything —he simply takes a certified check, in advance, then goes out behind the microphone, usually clutching a cold one, and exhales his ineffable magic: one-liners, snorts ("hee-unh, hee-unh"), the buffooneries of a quick-witted redneck (self-advertised). "I ain't the Carter that won't tell a lie," says Billy.