BrianJarrett.com

I didn’t follow Jesse Helms much, probably because he was a bit before my time and already half-dead, but it appears he’s finally ready to take his dirt nap.  I’d like to reference a few of the more meaningful “advances” Helms made before he decided to call it a day.

• In 1950, Helms became an unofficial researcher for United States Senate candidate Willis Smith. Smith was a conservative Democratic lawyer and former president of the American Bar Association. While working on the primary campaign against Frank Porter Graham, Helms helped create an ad that read, “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 favors mingling of the races.” Another ad featured photographs Helms doctored to illustrate the allegation that Graham’s wife had danced with a black man.
• Helms commented on the 1963 Civil Rights protests, “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.”
• Helms referred to The University of North Carolina as the “University of Negroes And Communists.”
• Helms had close ties to the rightist Salvadoran death squad leader Roberto D’Aubuisson and was considered a main sponsor of D’Aubuisson’s political party, the Nationalist Republican Alliance.^[8] When confronted with evidence that D’Aubuisson ran death squads that systematically murdered civilians, he replied that “[a]ll I know, is that D’Aubuisson is a free enterprise man and deeply religious.”
• Helms was “bitterly opposed to federal financing of AIDS research and treatment”. Opposing the Kennedy-Hatch AIDS bill in 1988, Helms stated, “There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy.” When Ryan White died in 1990, his mother went to Congress to speak to politicians on behalf of people with AIDS. She spoke to 23 representatives: Helms refused to speak to her even when she was alone with him in an elevator.
• Helms once deeply offended a black colleague, Democratic Senator Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois, by singing part of “Dixie” on a Capitol elevator. “Soon after the Senate vote on the Confederate flag insignia, Sen. Jesse Helms (R.-N.C.) ran into Mosely-Braun in a Capitol elevator. Helms turned to his friend, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah), and said, “Watch me make her cry. I’m going to make her cry. I’m going to sing ‘Dixie‘ until she cries.” He then proceeded to sing the song about “the good life” during slavery to Mosely-Braun (Gannett News Service, 1993-09-02; Time, 1993-08-16).”
• Having attempted, and failed, to block passage of the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Care (CARE) Act passed in 1990, Helms tried to block its refunding in 1995, saying that those with AIDS were responsible for the disease, because they had contracted it because of their “deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct”, and falsely claiming that more federal dollars were spent on AIDS than heart disease or cancer.  His opposition to the spending was consonant with his long term anti-gay rhetoric and opposition to civil rights for gay men and women generally. Helms had declared homosexuality “degenerate,” and homosexuals “weak, morally sick wretches.”

Some people deserve to die; particularly reprehensible hate-mongers who contribute nothing positive to society and only spread lies, hatred, bigotry, and evil.  Not surprising that Jerry Falwell embraced him.  It’s unfortunate to see so many good people die so young while these monsters live on, oozing hatred from their pores until the day they suck in their last breath.

Luckily the world is a little brighter but, unfortunately, his legacy will live on.  Hopefully now though there are fewer people like him in the world.  At least one can hope.