Jim Stillman
Nevar
Two men named Jesse Helms died last week.
July 12th 2008 16:34
Ann Coulter, writing in Human Events, placed the late Senator Helms on quite a pedestal:
In referring on the pleasures working for Senator Helms, she notes.
The good Ms Coulter cannot resist a nasty dig against Senator Kennedy, even in the midst of extolling the virtues of Senator Helms: “[Kennedy] was so nice to his staffers; he frequently offered them rides home in his car after parties.”
This is the same Ms Coulter who adopts the Right’s habit of over-cute nicknames and phrases: B. Hussein Obama, and WWW’s Glo-Bull warming, Bill Zipper and Billary.
The Jesse Helms with whose history and background I am familiar is not one whom would be readily compared or confused with John Adams or Thomas Jefferson.
I am aware of the Latin directive: de mortuis nil nisi bonum, speak only good of the dead.
That is a very difficult task when it comes to the former GOP senator from North Carolina.
If one were a compassionate, rational thinking person, anywhere in the world, it was a certainty that Jesse Helms was against whatever it was that you felt good and decent. Helms stood steadfast in his disapproval and, often, hatred, of multiculturalism, government funding for the arts, gay rights, AIDS funding. Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter, Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela (on whom Helms turned his back during Mandela's visit to the U.S. Capitol). Integration, the United Nations, smoking bans, cancer researchers, nuclear arms reduction, the Martin Luther King holiday, Bill Clinton, Ryan White (who became the “poster child” for AIDS/HIV research in the 1980’s, infected through a blood transfusion of tainted blood), trigger locks on guns, a woman's right to choose, foreign aid, and sufficient heat for the poor black residents of the slums he owned in Raleigh. And the list could go on forever.
Jesse Helms, like most of his contemporaries in the South, was a firm believer in racial segregation and a steadfast opponent of the nation's civil rights movement, where he joined men like Alabama Gov. George Wallace and South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond in a fight to keep outsiders from meddling in what he called "the Southern way of life."
But whereas Wallace and Thurmond would come to temper their views on race and civil rights, Helms never did. He died never having seen any need to apologize or deviate from his views.
Jesse has left the building and we are all better off now that he has left!
“Last Friday, on the Fourth of July, the great American patriot Jesse Helms passed away. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson also went to their great reward on Independence Day, so this is further proof of God.”
In referring on the pleasures working for Senator Helms, she notes.
“When I worked in the Senate in the '90s, the two senators famous for being absolute princes to work for were Sen. Helms and -- it pains me to tell you this, so you know it has to be true -- Sen. Teddy Kennedy.”
This is the same Ms Coulter who adopts the Right’s habit of over-cute nicknames and phrases: B. Hussein Obama, and WWW’s Glo-Bull warming, Bill Zipper and Billary.
The Jesse Helms with whose history and background I am familiar is not one whom would be readily compared or confused with John Adams or Thomas Jefferson.
I am aware of the Latin directive: de mortuis nil nisi bonum, speak only good of the dead.
That is a very difficult task when it comes to the former GOP senator from North Carolina.
If one were a compassionate, rational thinking person, anywhere in the world, it was a certainty that Jesse Helms was against whatever it was that you felt good and decent. Helms stood steadfast in his disapproval and, often, hatred, of multiculturalism, government funding for the arts, gay rights, AIDS funding. Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter, Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela (on whom Helms turned his back during Mandela's visit to the U.S. Capitol). Integration, the United Nations, smoking bans, cancer researchers, nuclear arms reduction, the Martin Luther King holiday, Bill Clinton, Ryan White (who became the “poster child” for AIDS/HIV research in the 1980’s, infected through a blood transfusion of tainted blood), trigger locks on guns, a woman's right to choose, foreign aid, and sufficient heat for the poor black residents of the slums he owned in Raleigh. And the list could go on forever.
Jesse Helms, like most of his contemporaries in the South, was a firm believer in racial segregation and a steadfast opponent of the nation's civil rights movement, where he joined men like Alabama Gov. George Wallace and South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond in a fight to keep outsiders from meddling in what he called "the Southern way of life."
But whereas Wallace and Thurmond would come to temper their views on race and civil rights, Helms never did. He died never having seen any need to apologize or deviate from his views.
Jesse has left the building and we are all better off now that he has left!
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Comment by Randy Inman
In some ways he was a great man, in some he wasn't. Like most of us I suppose. And yes of course us Southern Conservatives are all racist.
Comment by Lester Caudill
Round Politics
Jim are you calling Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter decent and moral, or are you just saying that Jesse opposed them? of which I do to.
Jimmy Carter, and Al gore being given the Noble Peace Prize has cheapened, and soiled that award and it means nothing now, might as well give it to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Comment by Jim Stillman
Political Certainty
But Senator Helms, in my opinion, failed in both regards. While the Senator and his staff did a good job in constituent services, something I assume all successful politicians perform, it was the political positions of which I find fault.
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