Jesse Helms: Gone for Good

"Jesse Helms was a kind, decent and humble man and a passionate defender of what he called 'the Miracle of America.' So it is fitting that this great patriot left us on the Fourth of July," ~ GWB

My reaction....BARF!!!

But as Bette Davis was supposed to have said about Joan Crawford: "Mother always told me to speak good of the dead. Jesse Helms is dead... GOOD!"

Jesse Helms on "Negroes":

"White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham(A 1950's North Carolina candidate) favors mingling of the races." Another ad featured photographs Helms himself had doctored to illustrate the allegation that Graham's wife had danced with a black man.

He called the University of North Carolina "the University of Negroes and Communists." Black civil rights activists were "Communists and sex perverts."

Of civil rights protests Helms wrote, "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." He also wrote, "Crime rates and irresponsibility among Negroes are a fact of life which must be faced."

Helms on homosexuals:

Over the years Helms has declared homosexuality "degenerate," and homosexuals "weak, morally sick wretches." Helms opposed the Kennedy-Hatch AIDS bill in 1988 by stating "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy." Despite his opposition AIDS money did come from the Government but he railed on that less money should be spent on people with AIDS because they got sick as a result of "deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct." He added, "we've got to have some common sense about a disease transmitted by people deliberately engaging in unnatural acts."

Jesse Helms being a racist:

And the man ABC News now describes as a "conservative icon" (8/22/01) in 1993 sang "Dixie" in an elevator to Carol Moseley-Braun, the first African-American woman elected to the Senate, bragging, "I'm going to make her cry. I'm going to sing Dixie until she cries."

Helms filibustered making Martin Luther King day a national holiday and was the sole senator in opposition to it.

And before anyone says that Helms came around on AIDS in his later years. No he didn't. He came around on AIDS in Africa. Still didn't want to help Americans with AIDS because, you know, they were "homersexuals".