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Jesse Helms: American Garbage
By Ken LayneJul 4th 2008 8:06PM
Filed Under:eRepublicans, Featured Stories, Gay Rights, Ken Layne's Outrage, Foreign Policy
Here's a July 4 history lesson we should print on the back of the American Flag: If you hate long enough and hard enough, you can go to the very top of the Washington garbage heap.Jesse Helms died today, 25 years too late, but the stench of his rotten career will always linger in the Senate, and over the South.
He was a hero to bigots and the cigarette corporations, a menace to the poor and downtrodden, and a mean little troll whose heart was so wrecked by wickedness that doctors had to patch it up with coronary valves from a pig.
Jesse Helms was an ugly extremist even within his own party. His idea of reconciliation with those who had been dragged to America in chains? Ranting on the Senate floor against a holiday for Martin Luther King, who was gunned down peacefully struggling for the American rights Helms dedicated his miserable life to crushing.
The foreign policy of Helms was no different. Dictators and right-wing death squads never had a better friend than Jesse Helms, who used his control of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to push his own sick version of diplomacy, rewarding monsters with money and weapons from Washington.
His elections were always narrow victories, his campaigns based on motivating just enough angry white racists to the polls to give him another six years of hateful rule.
Fathered by a vicious, racist cop in the rural North Carolina hill country, Helms cowardly evaded combat in World War II by working as a Navy recruiter safe at home in the South. He was too dumb and lazy to graduate college, but mean enough to go to work for segregationist Democrats, where he spread rumors that his political opponents went out with black women, and wrote campaign material like this:"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?"
He drifted to AM radio, ranting against the Negro. He wound up on the local TV news, giving the wingnut commentary at the end of the broadcast. His enemies were the same as always: "Negro hoodlums," the United Nations, "sex perverts," poor people.
For a dozen years he spewed his hate through the North Carolina airwaves, which was enough to -- barely -- win one of the state's Senate seats. He would never win by more than 55%
Once in Washington, Dixiecrat Helms became the new, stupid face of the Republican Party, the party that left behind intellectualism and civil rights and took up the Southern Strategy of pandering to bitter white losers while actively working against that same white working class. Helms was the perfect hack, the kind of lifelong fraud who made his career on the ignorant resentments of the same people he screwed so hard by always representing the mill owners and the tobacco corporations.
He was mean, cheap, petty and unloved. He was the ugliest kind of bigot and a stain on America. Anybody who says different is a liar.
Ken Layne is editor of Wonkette
Recent Comments
(Page 1 of 8)Tommy Christopher8:19PMJul 4th 2008
"This little light of mine,
I'm gonna let it shine.
This little light of mine,
I'm gonna let it shine.
This little light of mine,
I'm gonna let it shine.
Let it shine,
let it shine,
let it shine,
let it shine."
paulnashtn8:35PMJul 4th 2008
Ken Layne, the REAL garbage is your column.
Bettybb8:40PMJul 4th 2008
Obama has spent 20 years worshiping at the alter of racist hate mongering Rev Wright and Rev Pheleger.
It looks like the racists, this time, people of color, want to elect a racist President.
David J8:42PMJul 4th 2008
Yes, I always thought vicious Helms was a real sack of garbage. I won't miss him.
Peggy9:15PMJul 4th 2008
My grandmother taught us that hate begets hate. Your column certainly proves that.
Jo in SoCal9:16PMJul 4th 2008
What a beautiful eulogy Ken. Deeply moving.
Upton9:30PMJul 4th 2008
Good column, the world's a better place without a racist pig like Helms. Good riddance, I hope he burns in Hell.
Kathleen9:39PMJul 4th 2008
it's hard to know how to feel about the death of someone like Jesse Helms. I feel for his family but I can't say I'm sorry he's gone. Let's hope his passing is part of the passing of an age of bigotry and hatred.
milky9:49PMJul 4th 2008
The republican party of today caters to the mean, greedy, and/or stupid (wagering that paulnashtn and bettybb subscribe here). I'm sure he will be missed in those circles, hailed as a staunch supporter of (backward, draconian) values.
I hold hope that there is a special place in hell for him, where he gets to say, "Yes Sir, Masta Sir" , while shining shoes for an eternity, payment of spit in the face.
Denise Williams9:56PMJul 4th 2008
Amen, brother Layne.
DaevidMoor10:28PMJul 4th 2008
I'm not sure whether it was good or bad that such a bad man lived so long.
I hope in his final years he had the experience of learning that everything he ever stood for was wrong. I hope he had the chance to discover that his soul had long ago been eroded by hatred, hollowing out whatever was left of his humanity.
Helms couldn't help how he was raised. That he never learned that that "how" was so wrong, belongs to him, alone. I hope it cost him as much as it cost those who were savaged by his evil, if not in life, then after it.
Georgette10:29PMJul 4th 2008
Sheesh. Didn't you mother ever teach you to let the dead rest in peace. It's not nice to speak ill of the dead. Guess your mother didn't teach you that either. Let his maker be the judge.
gregg10:38PMJul 4th 2008
Finally Helms does something I can support. It's just a shame he waited eighty years. I really hope his fellow travelers join him in this courageous action. Finally, something good for America.
John10:53PMJul 4th 2008
Now if only the rest of the rathole republicans would die and rot with him.
AtomicWarBaby10:54PMJul 4th 2008
"The evil that men do, lives on long after they are dead." or something like that. That's why Jesse Helms and people in power like him, are so dangerous and so EVIL. Because they are true believers, the evil they do is a thousand times worse, than any common, ordinary street criminal!
There is an "Axis of Evil" alright, it's in the minds of racists and bigots and warmongers of all nationalities, ethnicities and right-wing religious ideologies, whether Christian, Muslim, Jewish or otherwise. Jesse Helms was part of that "Axis" of Evil here, a member if you will of the American Taliban.
T.Brough11:27PMJul 4th 2008
Good riddance to a human hate bucket. I wish I knew where is grave was so I could go and dance on it.
sewingmyfish11:29PMJul 4th 2008
This article is one hundred percent true and anyone who's too cowardly or stupid to think otherwise with Thumper the bunny by way of Fox News bullshit is doesn't have the moral integrity necessary to blow maggots for pocket change.
gjdodger11:41PMJul 4th 2008
To paraphrase Bette Davis: My mother always taught me to speak good of the dead. Jesse Helms is dead.
Good.
Bilbo McNuttypants12:01AMJul 5th 2008
American democracy is made stronger by well-considered discourse - and the death of destructive bastards like Helms.
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kaflooey8:19PMJul 4th 2008
Sheesh. Didn't your mother ever tell you that if you can't say anything nice about somebody you shouldn't say anything at all? LOL