Subscribe"There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy."
-- States News Service, 5/17/88
"What is really at stake is whether or not America will allow the cultural high ground in this nation to sink slowly into an abyss of slime to placate people who clearly seek or are willing to destroy the Judaic-Christian foundations of this republic."
-- 1990, on funding for the National Endowment for the Arts
"I've been portrayed as a caveman by some. That's not true. I'm a conservative progressive, and that means I think all men are equal, be they slants, beaners or niggers."
-- North Carolina Progressive, February 6, 1985
"Let me adjust my hearing aid. It could not accommodate the decibels of the Senator from Massachusetts. I can't match him in decibels or Jezebels, or anything else apparently."
-- 1993 Senate floor debate with Ted Kennedy
"All Latins are volatile people. Hence, I was not surprised at the volatile reaction."
-- stated by Helms after Mexicans protested his visit to Mexico in 1986 to investigate allegations of political corruption.
"To rob the Negro of his reputation of thinking through a problem in his own fashion is about the same as trying to pretend that he doesn't have a natural instinct for rhythm and for singing and dancing. The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that's thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men's rights."
When a caller to CNN's Larry King Live show praised guest Jesse Helms for 'everything you've done to help keep down the niggers,' Helms' response was to salute the camera
and say, 'Well, thank you, I think.'"
--- Wilmington Star-News, 9/16/95
"If God had wanted us to use the metric system, Jesus would have had 10 apostles."
"The New York Times and The Washington Post are both infested with homosexuals themselves."
University of North Carolina (UNC). "University of Negroes and Communists."
"Many white North Carolinians are no doubt motivated to vote for Helms because of the almost primal fears he fans. 'The principles we're espousing have been around for thousands of years,' former aide James Lucier once explained, citing the 'prepolitical' themes of God, family, property, and national pride.
But some voters are also attracted to Helms by the personal qualities that make him a rarity among politicians. He brings genuine passion and a sense of moral purpose to what he does. He stands on principle and refuses to compromise. He stands by his friends, and he forces opponents to vote on issues they would rather ignore.
'Most North Carolinians are not as conservative as Jesse Helms,' says Paul Luebke, a state representative and author of Tar Heel Politics. 'But by presenting himself as a man of courage, willing to stand up against "tax-and-spend liberals," homosexuality, and so forth, Helms commands respect.'" *
I think a certain amount of respect is due when people die.Only one of us said he pisses on Helms' grave. How much more respect do you want?
Appearing on “Larry King Live” in 1995, Jesse Helms, then the senior senator from North Carolina, fielded a call from an unusual admirer. Helms deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, the caller gushed, “for everything you’ve done to help keep down the niggers.” Given the rank ugliness of the sentiment — the guest host, Robert Novak, called it, with considerable understatement, “politically incorrect” — Helms could only pause before responding. But the hesitation couldn’t suppress his gut instincts. “Whoops, well, thank you, I think,” he said.
*sigh* You missed the point of what I was saying.*sigh* Back at you, actually.
or conscience.No, conscience would be if you didn't do it to say that you're better than him.
Shine on, you crazy deutsch bagge.
posted by porn in the woods at 4:44 PM
And you're still missing the point. I wasn't asking anyone else to do anything or change their behaviour or anything. I was musing on the conflict this brought up in me.I'm guessing that you missed the part where I said that if your objection is that you think I think you're demanding that anyone else do anything or change their behavior or anything, you're wrong.
For Mr. Helms, the orderliness of the small town even encompassed racial segregation; as a child, he saw it not as a great evil but as an accepted part of his world.
I agree that he was a reprehensible human being. I stated what very clearly. I also feel that people deserve respect when dead--if for no other reason than for the family and loved ones of the dead person. That is why there is a conflict for me here. I really, really don't understand how I could be any more clear.
From 1960 to 1972 he did political commentary on WRAL radio, WRAL-TV and the Tobacco Radio Network. The stations’ statewide reach and Mr. Helms’s piquant commentaries against communism, the “lax” criminal justice system and welfare turned Mr. Helms into a household name, both loved and hated.
Helms, as a prominent TV editorialist, repeatedly criticized what he called "the so-called" civil rights movement, attacked the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and portrayed the white South as a victim of a national smear campaign.
"The civil rights struggle is now no more than a political gambit leading to anarchy," Helms said in a WRAL editorial in April 1964. "It is time for politicians to stop thinking of the minority bloc votes of the next election and start thinking of the next generation. Otherwise America will be destroyed from within -- just as Karl Marx forecast."
What he doesn't say is that the 2,751 editorials were based in some of the most venal bigotry of the times. "Are civil rights only for Negroes?" he asked in 1963. "White women in Washington who have been raped and mugged on the streets in broad daylight have experienced the most revolting sort of violation of their civil rights. The hundreds of others who had their purses snatched last year by Negro hoodlums may understandably insist that their right to walk the street unmolested was violated." In his five-minute editorials, Helms condoned lunch-counter segregation; said civil-rights protesters were "no less an affront to society" than the Ku Klux Klan; and accused civil-rights marchers of participating in "sex orgies of the rawest sort." He also insisted that four Alabama Klansmen who murdered a Detroit woman in 1965 were responding to "deliberate provocation" by Martin Luther King Jr. and President Lyndon Johnson. If Helms feels any remorse for inflaming racial tensions in North Carolina during the 1960s, he reveals none of it in his new autobiography.
In fact, he still justifies his opposition to civil-rights laws. "Many good people who supported the principle of progress for everyone could not agree to the destruction of one citizen's freedom in order to convey questionable 'rights' to another," he writes. "They believed forced social engineering was hazardous to the freedom we all deserve." By polarizing the races, Helms writes, the civil-rights movement constituted a "new form of bigotry." But he also wants us to know that he himself is not a racist. As proof he offers his "friendship"--more like friendly banter--with one of the Capitol's black elevator operators.
posted by Nelson at 8:23 AM on July 4 [9 favorites]