I can’t think of one reason to be sad, so I won’t pretend.
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[…] I never had the misfortune to be represented in the Senate by the execrable Helms. I only had to suffer with the slightly less bad Strom Thurmond. By the time I was politically aware, though, good ol’ boy Sperm was already a joke, as evidenced by the nickname. […]
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[…] constructed by Adam. You can follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback. « Religious philosophy with Homer J.Simpson […]
Xenos
Yeah. He was a Democrat back in the day. Boy, are those guys contemptible.
If Obama wants to really liven things up he could organize a ten million man march to go snoopy dance on Helms’ grave.
Ted
If Helms had ever wanted anyone at all to mourn his death or celebrate his life other than raging racists and bigots, or his immediate family, he’d have conducted himself and used his power in such a way as to not be such a goddamn awful piece of shit racist and bigot.
For god’s sake, his lesbian granddaughter came out of the closet to him and he practically disowned her.
Raging asshole to the end. May all that anger and hatred show through on his face after the mortician gets done with him.
Wilfred
Bozo the Clown died, too. An inspiration to childhood anarchy, he was.
Stop all the clocks…
donnah
The thing is, the people put Helms there. And they kept him there. He was the longest-serving popularly-elected U.S. senator in North Carolina history. What does that tell you about the voters in North Carolina?
calipygian
Conclusive PROOF that K-Lo needs to be committed because she poses a danger to herself and others, particularly high school age children:
Scott H
Jesse Helms was always dead to me. The single thing more irrelevant than a dead politician is an out of office politician. This country became a calculably better place when Helms left the Senate.
I’ve travelled in my day, and the sort of support Helms enjoyed abounds aplenty in every corner of this country. So, too, do good and moral people. North Carolina is not exceptional. Except maybe their drivers: if you see a First in Flight license plate, back well away.
jrg
He never ran as one. Helms joined the Republican party before running for the Senate (the Dems were not racist enough for him).
We’ve got more than our share of idiot hicks here in N.C., but Helms never won re-election by a very large margin.
Dug Jay
One possibility: Obama doesn’t stand a chance of getting that state’s electoral votes.
Just saying.
Ted
Considering NC’s rather large black population, it tells me that a huge amount of NC’s white population are either racist, or just comfortable with a racist shit as one of their senators for all that time.
calipygian
North Carolina is more Research Triangle than Mayberry RFD/Dukes of Hazzard/turn black folk into gallows fruit/Jesse Helms country these days.
Its quite possible that the people of North Carolina are as ashamed of Jesse as a thirty something computer geek is ashamed of his high school live action Dungeons and Dragon’s playing.
Scott H
Some would aspire for their champion to assume the mantle of Statesman. It is to laugh. Maybe K-Lo is a member of the reality based community after all.
Dennis - SGMM
Maybe not to the end. Helms was hospitalized in 2006 for vascular dementia. I doubt that he even knew his own name during his last six months.
Andrew
Up through the early 90s, NC was marginally more racist fuckwit than reasonable, by about the margin that Helms got elected by, 55-45. Since then, all of the population growth has been in the progressive and more libertarian areas, like RTP and Charlotte. The state is still Republican, but it much less racist.
kid bitzer
yeah, the local rag here ran with the headline
“Ex-Senator J.H., 86, Leaves Controversial Legacy”.
my ass.
there’s no more controversy about his legacy than about adolph hitler’s.
John Cole
The thing I find weird about all the Helms coverage is that no one is praising Helms for any accomplishments, like the broadly bi-partisan Helms-Biden act that passed by near unanimity, or his later work with Bono and Africa. All I have seen on right-wing blogs is fauxtrage about things liberals and left-wing bloggers have said about them, and the reason they have said them is they at least remember some of the things he did. I don’t think our right-wing does, and so far it appears his crowning achievements according to right-wing blogs are “being conservative,” “pissing off liberals,” and “being ornery.” Duly noted.
You would think they would, at the very least, mention his 2000 address to the UN. You may not agree with what he said, but he did, I think, accurately sum up the right-wing position at the time regarding the relationship between the UN and the US. Instead of listing all his accomplishments, all we are seeing is outrage about what some mean bloggers said. And most of those bloggers didn’t really say anything other than quote Jesse Helms.
That says something, I think. personally, while his views on many things were disgusting, I admire the guy for at least having the balls to state them publicly and stick by them. I can deal with that, because then I can at least honestly address them. I will take Helms’s outright and open bullshit over the masked nonsense we see in the current lunatic wing of the GOP.
One more thing, and I really don’t remember enough to come to any conclusion, but I wonder what he would think about this current administration.
grandpa john
What a fucking idiot
change that to awful high school government teacher. So she wants a moron who has no idea of the concept of how government is supposed to work and who has no communication skills, barely being able to talk in complete sentences most of which are incomprehensibe to attempt to educate young people in how government works. And where the hell does she get the idea that the self serving egotistical playboy Bush would ever have any intention of devoting any of his time to public service.
Hope someone has removed all the sharp instruments from her reach.
4tehlulz
Tip for writers: If you use this phrase without a note of sarcasm, people will conclude that your idea is totally crazy.
Apsaras
Actually that sounds like something ginned up by Hell’s Ironic Punishments Division. Like sentencing Pat Buchanan to being a mexican lesbian or Jeane Schmidt to actually being a marine in Fallujah.
What I’ve seen the most of from right-wing trolls has been the usual “Yeah well Robert Byrd was in the Klan once so nyah nyah.”
The Moar You Know
I can. I’m sorry I didn’t happen forty years earlier.
Fuck Jesse Helms.
plus C
Sometimes words fail to express what only music can.
b. hussein canuckistani
The fact that he kept getting reelected tells me that there was some serious voter suppression going on.
I vote his corpse be fed to sharks.
Sock Puppet of the Great Satan
“I can’t think of one reason to be sad, so I won’t pretend.”
Yeah, there’s a reason to be sad. That he didn’t live to see a black man win the presidency of the United States.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Jesse Helms represented the worst America has to offer. There is much to be sad about in his passing. For example, I’m sad that his political career ever existed. I’m also sad that he seems to have died in the same state of racist bigotry in which he lived. It’s tragic that the man never had an epiphany, and recanted. It’s very sad that his legacy will only amount to “the man who stood shoulder to shoulder with David Duke.”
It’s very sad that people waste their entire lives fueling the fires of racial intolerance. It’s worse still when the bigots are successful. But the worst part of all is when they die without ever even realizing that the sum total of their life accomplishments was to hold this country back several decades.
On another note, I’m sad that Hunter S. Thompson’s already dead. The eulogy Helms deserves is the kind of hatchet job he excelled at.
Equal Opportunity Cynic
A totally crazy Saturday-morning thought: Wouldn’t George W. Bush make an awesome high-school government teacher?
I think her point is that it would be, like, totally awesome for the high school kids. No more of this tiresome study of obsolete documents like the Declaration of Independence or the US Constitution. No more fretting over irrelevant concepts like the separation of powers or checks and balances.
The answer to every essay question would be, “The Preznit works hard to keep us safe from the Terr’ists. He deserves our support and can do whatever he wants. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a San Francisco lib’rul.”
What’s not to like?
liberal
donnah wrote,
What do the elections of 2000 and 2004 tell you about the white vote in the US as a whole? (Disclaimer: I’m a white male American.)
trollhattan
I could imagine 43 “learnin'” some kids on history about as easily as I could imagine him grading their essays.
“Good werk. Y’all used some big words there.”
B+ and a smiley face.
El Cid
Those of you recollecting the classic Helms “White Hands” ad (“You needed that job, but they had to give it to a minority”), try to remember that the next time CNN’s “Best Political Analysts On TV” team features Alex Castellanos, Republican Strategist — he’s the guy who wrote that commercial.
Castellanos’ valuable, insightful, Helms-experienced “analysis” on CNN as Barack Obama won North Carolina’s primary:
Yeah, so, like, we need a smart guy on CNN to wonder if the next President will nominate a former Weather Underground admitted attempted bomber to an important cabinet position, ’cause, you know, ‘we just don’t know’.
Notorious P.A.T.
WEll, that would require him to work, so there’s about as much chance of that happening as of me getting a date with Charlize Theron.
Third Eye Open
Have you ever seen BOZO and Jesse Helms in the same place at the same time? I’m not saying anything, just sayin’
Tim (The Other One)
“Wouldn’t George W. Bush make an awesome high-school government teacher?”
Everyone open “My Pet Supreme Court” to page 24.
RSA
Jesse Helms had the reputation of taking care of his constituents; it’s too bad that he wasn’t the mayor of some small town rather than a Senator, given what he was capable of. The one positive thing I’ll say about Helms is that one of his last statements about AIDS was this: “I’m so ashamed that I’ve done so little.” It’s good to hear someone who has done a lot of evil in the world admit to feeling shame.
I imagine Jesse Helms on his way to Heaven right now, and hearing on his arrival, “You were qualified for a place here, but they had to give it to a minority.”
nightjar
How dare you be smirch the character of America’s now late great clown Bozo by comparing him to the likes of flaming racist Helms. Bozo is not Helms even though Helms is a Bozo.
Your apologies forthwith sir, or it’s pistolas at dawm.
Signed Demo the Evil Clown.
Third Eye Open
I am not casting false aspersions upon Bozo, just making an interesting point…such as the interesting point that you never say Hitler and Walt Disney in the same place at the same time
Indian leg wrestling, best two outta three, I got the first round of beers afterwards.
Mrs. Peel
He came around on AIDS in Africa. Still didn’t want to help Americans with AIDS because, you know, they were “homersexuals”.
cbear
Happy to hear it—another piece of dogshit wiped from the heel of American society.
nightjar
Clowns don’t wrestle, especially Evil ones. But the beers will restore Bozo’s honor and quench my thirst, so bottoms up! :)
SixStringFanatic
….RSA Says:
I imagine Jesse Helms on his way to Heaven right now, and hearing on his arrival, “You were qualified for a place here, but they had to give it to a minority.”….
Not bad, but TBogg (on his blog) had one even better; “I imagine Jesse Helms in hell tonight, being fucked up the ass by Roy Cohn.” TBogg, by the way, owes me a new monitor/keyboard.
And don’t be so quick to assume that if Helms said, “I wish I had done more about AIDS”, he meant anything good.
The man was a nasty, racist, cheating fuck (his campaigns incurred the after-the-fact ire of the FEC on multiple occasions) and the only tragedy I see here, as others have noted, is that he didn’t live long enough to see a black man elected president. Hell is for people who whimper end-of-life regrets for their lifetimes of shit-slinging.
“Hallelujah…Holy Shit!! Where’s the Tylenol?”
/rant
Ted
I love K-Lo’s idea. Then high school students can learn things like “It’s the executive branch’s job to interpret law,” and other bits of Bush wisdom.
Dennis - SGMM
Jesse Helms’ epitaph: an ad he helped create in 1950 while working for the senatorial campaign of conservative Democrat Willis Smith against Democrat Frank Porter Graham:
Mrs. Peel
More oldies but goodies:
“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.”
“Crime rates and irresponsibility among Negroes are a fact of life which must be faced.”
The University of North Carolina was “the University of Negroes and Communists.”
Black civil rights activists were “Communists and sex perverts.”
Andrew
The Corner’s KKK outreach drive this weekend will surely bring more African-Americans into the GOP fold.
William Teach
Whew! Look at all the left wing tolerance and compassion fly!
I guess it is easy to brand all us folks who liked and voted for Jesse as hicks and racists, but, what does it say about a party that has continued to re-elect a former KKK member?
Mrs. Peel
My grandmother always said “death comes in 3’s” so we’re still one clown short.
chopper
but the class still won’t be as hard as that communications course i took that was taught by popeye.
Mrs. Peel
At least we broke him of it. What does it say about you people who still elect CURRENT members of the KKK”?
And intolerance of the intolerant it a GOOD thing bucko. Sorry boys but I don’t play by your one-sided rules. Throw your garbage out there and I’ll send it back to you with some extra shit piled on top. You’ve been wallowing in the bullshit that spills out of the RNC and Fox Noise for so long that you already stink to high heaven. What’s a little more?
chopper
better a former klan member who found the error of his ways than an unrepentant ass-fuck racist choad.
John Cole
I will say again what I said earlier. Still have yet to see one mention on rightwing blogs about his accomplishments, just fauxtrage about what “leftards” are saying about Helms.
In fact, good old Mr. teach can’t even come up with anything in his limp send-off:
But Teach has lots of things you evil lefties have said!
This game is so old.
AnneLaurie
Helms was an early adopter, if not an inventor, of many of the current GOP’s favorite dirty tricks — from swiftboating to photo-faking to shell “foundations” collecting illegal campaign contributions to voter disenfranchisement via targeted mail campaigns. He was also a miserable little homunculous whose co-workers remember him for telling a nine-year-old hemophiliac that “nobody in America ever got AIDS except sodomites” and attempting to “make [African-American Senator Moseley-Braun] cry” by whistling ‘Dixie’ at her. It would have immeasurably improved the Republican Party if he’d died thirty years early, and it’s only a pity that his natural ideological offspring such as Karl Rove and Ralph Reed are unlikely to commit hara-kiri in sympathy.
nightjar
POTD! Would you be the delectable Emma Peel
The Other Steve
I don’t know who this Helms guy is.
Are you talking about Leona Helmsey? I thought she died last year?
J.D. Rhoades
It says that, among other things, tobacco farmers liked having the senior Senator from NC as the head of the Agriculture Committee where he could safeguard their subsidies. By the time he broke his pledge to stay there in order to take Foreign Relations, he was dug in like a tick.
Thomas Jackson
Ah the goodwill and tolerance of the Left. Who knew that they were such good chaps. Now on rightwing sites when a noted Leftist dies you seem the same caliber of comment, right?
Dennis - SGMM
Helms epitomized the southern conservative, berating Blue State morals and beliefs while shoveling Blue State tax money to all of the like-minded underachievers back home.
slippy hussein toad
Wait!! You mean that when it’s convenient for YOU, suddenly everyone has to be so fucking “tolerant” of, for example, Jesse Helms’ big buddy Augusto Pinochet. The guy who threw political opponents out of airplanes. And don’t forget Roberto. Yeah. Charming asshole.
And this:
A fucking saint, he was. His later-life recanting of his AIDS position means nothing to me.
And you’re now being “oppressed” by my intolerance? Tell you what: if you want to stand up in defense of Mr. Helms you go right ahead. But me, I’m on my way to take a huge, steaming, stinking dark-beer shit on his grave. Why don’t you take all that infantile poutrage of yours, polish it up real nice, and let me jam it up your candy ass with a pneumatic hammer. Fuck Jesse Helms. Fuck everything about him, always, forever. He is irredeemably one of the least useful blobs of human flesh that has ever occupied desperately-needed space on this planet. Someone please scrub the place of his passing clean with some radioactive steam or something.
ThymeZone
I generally am respectful of the newly dead.
However, I make an exception this case. Good riddance to a truly evil man. Fuck him and the people who hid, and still hide, in his black shadaw.
The Moar You Know
Always, my good chum. Your party of closeted homosexuals, petty theives and theocratic fascists wrote the book on slander of both living and dead liberals.
We’re just returning the favor.
Go back to your fainting couch, you gutless, America-hating piece of crap.
If your racist hick ass fell down the stairs getting out of your double-wide, and died, I would laugh. Feel better?
Dennis - SGMM
One has to only go as far as the reaction of the right wing’s reaction to Teddy Kennedy’s being disabled by a tumor to know their moral superiority.
Scott H
I love how when it’s one of these reactionary’s sacred cows taking it in the head it’s all “Where’s your vegetarianism now, assholes!?” Those twerps got a grip on political correctness like an etard on a binkie.
Jay
“etard”?!
hahaha. do explain.
I have Cerebral Palsy, and I understand Helms was once the executive director of the NC chapter of United Cerebral Palsy.
I do not for one second believe that one can reconcile homophobia and racism with compassion for those of us with physical disabilities, so please tell me how Bob Dole can at once author the Americans With Disabilities Act and DOMA without getting pilloried.
Scott H
Etard is slang for a user of street ecstasy. Baby pacifiers are for the teeth-grinding associated with sh!t drugs.
bargal20
Leave Jesse Helms alooooooonnnneee!
It’s not like he’s a living 12 year-old crippled kid whose granite kitchen benches require a thorough investigation!
ThymeZone
Hey, that standard would make Charles Manson qualify to be a pundit on FoxNews, I guess.
Sure, he is a monster, but at least he is a monster with the balls to state his ideas publicly and stick by them.
{ rolls eyes }
Shoot me. Somebody, just fucking shoot me.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Spoofing has really gone downhill around here. There was a time on this site when no self-respecting troll could place comments like this with impunity.
How the mighty have fallen.
John Cole
I will, if you keep cropping quotes to take them out of context to generate your own fauxtrage. The full quote reads a little different, doesn’t it:
It is the difference between the douchebag klansmen who openly march, and the one who lurk in the shadows and we can not openly deal with.
I am so sick and tired of people willfully misinterpreting shit. Some days this blog is not worth it.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
I guess it is easy to brand all us folks who burn crosses as racists, but wasn’t Obama’s grandmother a racist, too?
Notorious P.A.T.
Do you think our saying unkind things about someone who is too dead to hear them is anywhere near as harmful as fighting civil rights legislation or blocking anti-AIDS funding?
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
I guess it’s easy to brand all us folks who oppose civil rights legislation and anti-AIDS funding as racist, homophobic troglodyte loons, but, isn’t there some random Democrat who’s also a racist, homophobic troglodyte loon? And doesn’t that mean that the two parties are completely equivalent, and that you’re a hypocrite for attacking Jesse Helms without taking the time to attack every racist Democrat, too?
ThymeZone
Really? You will shoot commenters for “cropping quotes?”
So the new rule is, blockquote entire posts or else risk being shot?
Okay, noted.
Sorry, I stick by my blast. There is no basis I can see for giving Helms even the faintest praise for anything, unless it’s for finally dying and shutting the hell up. His willingness to “state publicly” his insane sociopathic views only emboldened others to act like damned fools.
bayville
So sad to here about Helms’ death.
Hey, has Sabbathia been traded by the Indians yet?
Just Some Fuckhead
Amen, brother John – I am feeling yer sentiments right now! I say we dump these fuckers and start over, just you and me. John Cole and Some Fuckhead. Wow, it’s got a special ring to it, dudn’t it? You can say stupid shit all day long and I’ll come along and drop the hammer when the proles get lippy.
ThymeZone
Careful you don’t drop it on your foot.
Tim (The Other One)
Jesus you bastards, “My Pet Supreme Court” was fuckin’ funny !
You people are heartless ! Oh and it was all downhill after Huey Lewis for fuck’s sake.
ThymeZone
This just in: Jesse Helms remains dead.
Just Some Fuckhead
Teez, I don’t wanna have to make an example outta you this early into me and Cole’s new venture. You know me and you is like this, yo yo. *makes gang sign for entwined tumors and thumps chest twice* Just lay low for a while and I’ll slip ya some juice when J Dawg forgets he banned you.
ThymeZone
Ahrite. Im back to my crib for a B tizzle.
TenguPhule
Edited for clarity.
Jimmm
Rather than speak ill of the dead, best we let Helms’s words do the dirty work for us.
But would it be wrong, in a moral sense, for me to wish that Helms be ass-raped for all eternity in Hell?