We're told to never speak ill of the dead, but I'll make an exception for Jesse Helms.
My exposure to Helms began in college, at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, when he was a Raleigh TV station executive. In his regular on-air "commentaries"—which students watched for the unintended comedy—he referred to our town as "Communist Hill" and suggested a wall be built around it to keep "libreyal" views from infecting the rest of the state.
He (in the early 1970s!) still referred to black people as "Negroes," stretching the word out with a quivering drawl so it more resembled his preferred n-word. His animus toward "Negroes" equaled that toward "homerseksyuls"; in truth, he seemed to hate everyone that was not stamped out of the racist white mold that created him. And yet he was a man of God, of course.
During my years in Chapel Hill, the campus was quiet and, in fact, disappointingly apolitical, so the "Communist" epithet, like everything else about Helms, seemed outdated and stiff with rigor mortis. Imagine my surprise when, the next year, Helms was elected U.S. Senator. Having grown up in Georgia when Lester Maddox was governor and J.B. Stoner (a true KKK man) was a perennial candidate for state office, I can't say I was shocked.
Helms' career in the Senate passed like a kidney stone, painful, predictable and protracted. No need to recount the collective record of shame he accrued; it has, since his death on July 4, been on public view, though the "tributes" have far outweighed the honest assessments of his career.
Besides being an obstructionist without peer, Helms was a cruel and vindictive man. On an elevator at the U.S. Capitol, he and his pal Sen. Orrin Hatch ran into Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun, the first black woman elected to the U.S. Senate. She'd just opposed an effort to commemorate the Confederate flag, and Helms was pissed. He turned to Hatch and said, "Watch me make her cry. I'm going to sing 'Dixie' until she cries." And then he did just that. Later, pathetically, he blocked Mosely-Braun's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to New Zealand.
Helms also made a personal threat on the life of the U.S. president in 1994, warning Bill Clinton not to show up in North Carolina "without a bodyguard." Helms faced no legal consequences, of course—shucks, y'all, it's just Jesse being Jesse. But imagine a Democratic senator saying something like that about Reagan.
Another political dinosaur named Jesse recently rose from the media swamp and slithered onto the stage. The Reverend Jesse Jackson threatened to castrate Barack Obama for "talking down to black people." He was on Fox News, and allegedly thought the microphone was off. Better that it was on, so that we can hear how he really feels, just as it would have been better if Helms had simply used the n-word when he said the only slightly more presentable "nigras."
After a career of anti-Semitic remarks, extramarital affairs and out-of-wedlock progeny—this from a man who excoriated black youth for promiscuity—Jackson would have been wise to retreat to his Chicago haven, write his memoirs and play with his grandchildren. But he, like Bill Clinton this past year, can't stay away from the limelight.
Both Clinton and Jackson, in fact, share the sort of desperation portrayed by Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard. Formerly big "stars," time has passed by all three, yet they continue to live under the illusion that they are giants. Clinton and Jackson can't abide the fact that Barack Obama may be an agent of change. Change is not good for political dinosaurs. Who knows, maybe Obama's winning the primary in North Carolina was what really killed Jesse Helms.
The tell-tale sign that Jesse Jackson had reached bottom was that, when his latest gaffe about Obama occurred, he was an eager guest on Fox News.
Fox News? Really, Jesse, that may be the saddest part of all.
