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| Billy Long didn't like being called a smack talker. |
Having gone through Army basic training at Fort Knox, Kentucky, I am well aware of how drill sergeants quickly single out those who come with the most baggage, those who are least prepared, and those who likely to cause the most trouble to the mission at hand. I have a feeling it's not much different in the journalism world when choosing a political target, and it didn't take long for the Washington Post to discover Billy Long and exposed a few of his weaknesses. Perhaps it was Dave Catanese's early work on Long that gave them insight, but what ever it was, Long became the "smack talking" uneducated auctioneer for the country to meet in the Washington Post's first paragraph introducing the new freshmen class.
To see how Tuesday's midterm rout will change the face of Congress, look no farther than the Bible Belt of southwest Missouri. Voters there replaced Rep. Roy Blunt, a savvy insider, with Billy Long, a smack-talking auctioneer with no college degree but a pithy slogan: "Fed Up."
It didn't take Billy Long long to say he didn't like it. Why am I not surprised? Here is a guy who wants to be liked by everyone and plays the victim card when he's not.
From the Springfield News-Leader's softball series of stories about Billy Long:
He took issue with a recent front-page Washington Post story that referred to him as a "smack-talking auctioneer."
"I'm not a 'smack-talker,' I'm more of a colloquial talker," he said. "I've got a lot of Ozark sayings. I use a lot of Billyisms, as I call them. But I'm sure not a smack-talker."
Of course when you read the blogs David Cantanese wrote on the KY3 Political Notebook before leaving for the Politico, Cantanese always suggested it was only a matter of time before Long's mouth got him in trouble.
