Lest We Forget

Sociopath:

Soon after the Senate vote on the Confederate flag insignia, Sen. Jesse Helms (R.-N.C.) ran into Mosely-Braun in a Capitol elevator. Helms turned to his friend, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah), and said, “Watch me make her cry. I’m going to make her cry. I’m going to sing ‘Dixie‘ until she cries.” He then proceeded to sing the song about “the good life” during slavery to Mosely-Braun. (Gannett News Service, 9/2/93; Time, 8/16/93)

And that’s what I like about the South!  Here’s more:

In 1984, when Helms faced his toughest opponent in Democratic Gov. Jim Hunt, the late Bill Peterson, one of the most evenhanded reporters I have ever known, summed up what “some said was the meanest Senate campaign in history.”

“Racial epithets and standing in school doors are no longer fashionable,” Peterson wrote, “but 1984 proved that the ugly politics of race are alive and well. Helms is their master.”

A year before the election, when public polls showed Helms trailing by 20 points, he launched a Senate filibuster against the bill making the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. a national holiday. Thurmond and the Senate majority were on the other side, but the next poll showed Helms had halved his deficit.

All year, Peterson reported, “Helms campaign literature sounded a drumbeat of warnings about black voter-registration drives…. On election eve, he accused Hunt of being supported by ‘homosexuals, the labor union bosses and the crooks’ and said he feared a large ‘bloc vote.’ What did he mean? ‘The black vote,’ Helms said.” He won, 52 percent to 48 percent.

And remember sports fans - almost every Republican still runs a version of that campaign.  Including the Dear Leader and the Dark Lord.

If there is such a thing as heaven and hell, then Jesse is in hell getting the shit beaten out of him with baseball bats wielded by Jackie Robinson, Jesse Owens, and Joe Louis. Metal baseball bats. Big ones.

Comments

[Bruce Henry]

I remember clearly the '84 campaign. Every Helms commercial ended with, "Jim Hunt.....A Mondale liberal" in a voice dripping with sarcasm. It was like he was saying "Jim Hunt... a Communist pedophile puppy-killer". It was sickening, and so was Helms. You'd talk to people, and they'd say, "I may not agree with him, but you know where he stands!" That was precisely my problem with him, but this IS North Carolina.

[Marcus Aurelius]

When he was alive, Helms was a wall-eyed racist. Now that he's dead, he's worm food. Finally contributing something.

[Lisa]

Perhaps a more fitting end for Jesse is to be seated in front of a wall-mounted t.v. broadcasting not FOX but some actual news, which shows him a world slowly evolving.

A world in which gay marriage and abortion rights are no longer an issue, but the eradication of sex slavery and universal health care are. Something facsimilating a true brotherhood of man in which the betterment of all mankind is the only concern, rather than an ancillary one.

That would be a true diminution of this man's life. And, if he sat there enough, it might facilitate a conversion. An evolutionary win-win.

[mandt]

Someone should have poured salt on that slug decades ago.

[Magical Shrimp]

Probably my favourite comment at the Carpet Bagger Report comes from W. Bryan: "The cesspool gurgled and stirred and a fecal bubble rose to the surface and popped. The bubble and the stink it emitted was the life essence of Jesse Helms. He was in a position to do much good and positive -instead his constricted and hate filled deeds insures that he’ll be reincarnated as a turd plop from Joe Lieberman’s withered backside."

Good riddance.

[Michael]

Makes me wish I genuinely believed in heaven and hell, because no way Jesse makes it through the pearly gates...and deep down, I think he knew it.

[paul Peterson]

Actually, the truth is, I have no problem speaking ill of the dead when the dead has wished me dead on several occasions. I am an ex-christian, pothead, libertarian anarchist. I know Jesse’s body is still warm, if it ever was, but you know something? SO WHAT?!

Bill Hicks used to say “you know anybody that far to the right is hiding a deep dark secret. When he dies, He is going to commit suicide first of all in a bathtube and then in his basement they are going to find the skins of dead children drying. And his wife will be on the TV all night saying ‘you know I never could figure out about Jesse’s huge collection of little shoes’”

That about sums up his personality, even if the details were wrong.

[pissed off patricia]

I can't say something nice so I won't say anything at all about him.

[tafka pb]

Someone get a development deal option to John Hodgman about playing Jesse Helms in some film somewhere.

Dead ringer!