What was going on last night?


My drive home last night was a bit weird — there were fireworks going off everywhere, and being a bit disconnected from the calendar with all my recent travel I was puzzled by it all. Was Minnesota celebrating my return?

I shouldn’t be so self-centered. Of course they weren’t. When I got home I saw the news: Jesse Helms is dead. That makes more sense as a reason to get out and celebrate patriotically — one less twisted, ignorant, bigoted pustule dots the face of America now.

Comments

  1. JMC says

    It was so amazing that NPR chose not to talk about the negative consequence for the people of this country due to the obstructionist way he operated. He was bigoted but they never said it. He did not care that people suffered if they were not his chosen ones. Gay, black, poor, who cared?

  2. JoJo says

    I liked Jesse Jackson’s comment:

    We offer condolences to his bereaved family, but the senator had a chance to move toward a more perfect union and he chose the Confederacy.

  3. Nightshadequeen says

    “Indecent art?” I guess that means he shares something with the Nazis, then. (Also, what was the idea behind not sending the UN cash? Another blow to America’s reputation)

  4. Geral says

    Does the Right really want to be associated with him? The article keeps declaring he’s an icon. It’s always unfortunate when a man dies but we didn’t lose anything politically.

    The sad thing is there’s always a dozen people waiting to take his spot.

  5. Greg says

    For me, he had one very positive effect – he was the final inspiration for me to quit using tobacco products (20 years ago) –

  6. d simpson says

    ” — one less twisted, ignorant, bigoted pustule dots the face of America now.”

    As they go I can only hope fewer are being produced to replace them.

  7. MAJeff, OM says

    It was so amazing that NPR chose not to talk about the negative consequence for the people of this country due to the obstructionist way he operated.

    Pretty much every news organization has been whitewashing his record. “He was controversial.” “He battled with liberals and gays.”

    He was a vile monster who supported Jim Crow and who gleefully fostered policies that led to dead gay people.

    I’m still celebrating today.

  8. allkom says

    Intellectual question:
    Does he go to hell so to be tormented by Carlin for all eternity, or does heaven have segregated quarters to accommodate his prejudices? :)

  9. Traffic Demon says

    Grim Reaper was a few years late hauling this corpse away, maybe he’ll make up for it by showing up early for Don McLeroy.

    –El Traf
    sparty

  10. R. J. says

    The dinosaur is dead! While I feel for his family, since losing a loved one is sad, I don’t mourn the loss of a regressive, bigoted ignoramus. He caused more people pain and sorrow and now that he is gone, maybe someone can start undoing the damage he caused. The Neo-Pithicines he was representative of (no pun intended) will hopefully all start dying off soon and leave the world to the evolved.

  11. Holbach says

    Poor Jesse, lying there with no place to go. Y’al come back and let us know what’s out there, ya hear?

  12. Gary J. Bivin says

    In a perfect universe, he would be reincarnated as a poor, black, gay woman…

  13. Reginald Selkirk says

    Was Minnesota celebrating my return?

    Was a fatted calf turning on the rotisserie when you got home?

  14. says

    You’d like to think that Jesse Helms and his ilk are extinct, or at least endangered, but they survive (thrive?) in nasty little pockets like the Council of Conservative Citizens. David Neiwert reported at FireDogLake on a recent CCC meeting in Alabama (with a link to Gabriel Thompson’s first-person account at AlterNet). The racists are still out there.

    It’s very difficult to summarize how vile these people are (although Neiwert and Thompson are good reporters), but the CCC folk are proud racialists and have posted the Alabama meeting speeches on line on their website, where you can hear for yourself how Tom Sunic checks the bylines of news articles for Jewish names before he decided if he should give them any credence, how Gary Roper “proves” that slavery was universally acceptable in Biblical societies (which is why the South was right and the North was wrong in the Civil War), and Sam Dickson describes how “deracinated whites”, which he calls “whiggers” (like Sen. Obama’s mother, who lacked the white pride necessary to prevent her from marrying a black man), are unworthy members of the white race (and will be swept away).

    Be on the alert against them.

  15. MAJeff, OM says

    Will Westboro Baptist picket the funeral?

    “Jesse Helms: Fag Enabler” would be a rockin’ sign for all those retrograde funerary celebrants.

  16. Richard Rush says

    While we rightly celebrate the death of Helms we must remember that a majority of the people of North Carolina elected him to the senate five times. Helms was never secretive about his views, and those people obviously liked what they saw. We may be rid of one vile man, but a large number of the vile people who elected him are still with us.

  17. E.J. Throbb (17 3/4) says

    So, farewell then,
    Jesse Helms.
    Jesse? Where I come from,
    that’s a girl’s name.
    Were you perhaps,
    a secret cross-dresser,
    like J. Edgar
    Hoover?
    The only other male Jesse
    I can think of,
    is Jesse Jackson.
    Were you perhaps,
    secretly black?
    No, I think,
    you were just a boring,
    run-of-the-mill
    bigot.
    So,
    Instead of
    “Farewell, Jesse Helms”,
    I’ll just say,
    “Good riddance”.

  18. JoJo says

    I just read the Guardian‘s obituary for Helms. It had this little tibit:

    “Your tax dollars are being used,” he claimed in one letter, “to pay for grade school classes that teach our children that cannibalism, wife-swapping, and the murder of infants and the elderly are acceptable behaviour.”

    I’m speechless.

  19. says

    @Geral #6:

    It’s always unfortunate when a man dies but we didn’t lose anything politically.

    Actually, Bill Maher put it best upon the occasion of the death of Jerry Fallwell: “Death isn’t always sad.” And about not losing anything politically, that’s an understatement…

    I would say “rot in Hell,” but, hey, this is Pharyngula.

    Now, when are YOU going to keel over, Pat Robertson? You’re wasting good oxygen that could be going to valuable research bacteria instead.

  20. llewelly says

    Helms was a scumbag who rooted for racism and constantly sought to increase the suffering anyone who wasn’t white, christian, male, and straight. He opposed funding for AIDS, He dug up pseudo science to prevent action against global warming and many other dangers, and supported many policies that killed many fine Americans. He was a bloody-handed monster who spoke to everything jingoistic and stupid in the American character. He shat on the American constitution with nearly every vote. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.

  21. paul says

    The older generation dies off and the younger, progressive generation (the one that accepts every human as an equal) takes its place. Luckily I see the bigots dying off in greater numbers, or I don’t know that I’d have the will to go on living.

  22. says

    And yet, the media are acting like just because he died all the terrible things he did just evaporated. I’ve never understood this need on their part. His death should be an opportunity to reflect on the pain he caused.

  23. says

    On my way home last night, I was barely able to see with all the smoke from the fireworks… What sort of environmental hazard is this????

  24. says

    Another quote from the Guardian obituary of #25:

    “Robert Pastor, whose ambassadorship to Panama was scuppered by Helms in 1995, commented that, ‘nothing Jesse Helms did in his entire career will enhance America’s national security more than his retirement.'”

  25. khops says

    As a NJ native who has moved to the hell hole that is NC for grad school, I can testify that there are more than enough fundy creotards with KKK leanings here to keep Helms in office for 5 terms easily. The local news is doing nothing but praising Helms and interviewing local officials who talk about what a wonderful mentor he was. They are also interviewing local townspeople…oh if only I had been so lucky.

    Mostly I’m looking forward to dancing on his grave since it will be 20 minutes from my apartment.

  26. ChemBob says

    Greg, the firework smoke was also dense here in Oakland Co., MI. Every road we drove was dense with choking firework smoke. Not too wonderful for an asthmatic, I can attest to that. It seemed to be the worst I’ve ever seen it. Possibly hanging in the air due to the high pressure system and the lack of a breeze. May have also been a bit of a thermal inversion, but I’m not sure about that.

  27. Sili says

    I guess de mortuis … is true after all. At least in the press.

    Good riddance.

  28. kit C. says

    For a bit more comic relief on this “loss”, Tbogg has some exceptionally pithy comments. All are well deserved by this disgusting example of racist exceptionalism. If there is a hell, he’s roasting in it, but there isn’t, so he’s just dead, dead, dead.

  29. SteveM says

    The only other male Jesse I can think of, is Jesse Jackson.

    Jesse Ventura and Jesse James come immediately to mind.

  30. Holbach says

    Poor Jesse, if he ony could speak, he would say: “I don’t want to be dead; there’s no future in it.”

  31. Jeph says

    So, given the list of grievances JoJo found in the BBC obit (#25), was the good Mr. Helms complaining about a Bible class? The Book of Joshua covers the violence against children and the elderly pretty well, ritual cannibalism has been the core experience of Christianity for the past several thousand years, and I’m pretty sure when Abraham told Pharaoh that Sarah was his “sister,” things went a little further than a box of chocolates shaped like scarabs.

  32. Pierce R. Butler says

    Curse you, Jeph @ # 42, you beat me to the Bible punch!

    All that’s left to say is that Jesse Helms made the US a better country – on 7/4/2008.

  33. George Atkinson says

    The last headline I recall seeing about him was “Jesse Helms receives heart valve from another pig”.

  34. Blaidd Drwg says

    @ JoJo #25:

    Of course, what he was talking about was Christian principles. Cannibalism, wife-swapping, and the murder of infants and the elderly are all found (and lauded) in the Bible, along with ethnic cleansing, incest, and pretty much every other ‘sin’ that the fundies pretend to oppose.

  35. says

    I grew up in North Carolina and from the time I was old enough to vote until I left that state I voted against him. He was openly bigoted and ignorant and yet he was never defeated in an election. That says a lot about the voting population of North Carolina, and also why I no longer live there.

  36. Logicel says

    Sorrow for his family? F*cking dipshits, they should have disowned the bastard, and they didn’t, so f*ck them also.

  37. Rey Fox says

    I think all the headlines on Helms’ death really ought to include the word “finally”.

  38. --PatF in Madison says

    Please. We must all remember…

    “Of the dead, nothing but good.”

    He’s dead.

    Good.

  39. Fernando Magyar says

    He was also responsible for The US not ratifying the Kyoto treaty since he considered Global Warming to be as he put it, “The Great Global Warming Swindle”.

  40. JohnnieCanuck, FCD says

    He’s left the world a better place, but only by leaving it.

  41. JohnnieCanuck, FCD says

    He also held seats on the Agriculture Committee, looking out for North Carolina’s extensive tobacco industry […].

    What kind of evil did he not get involved with?

  42. Josh says

    Is Jesse indeed a girl’s name where Throbb comes from? In addition to James, Jackson, and Ventura, there’s Jesse Owens, U.S. boy singer Jesse McCartney, and the guy who looks as if he’s gonna win the current season of _The Bachelor_. “Jesse” by Janis Ian is about a man; and indeed, most people named Jesse get it from the Bible character, David’s father.

  43. DamnRight says

    I’d prefer term limits than waiting for these jerks to die… get rid of all these old dudes… Byrd, Shumer etc… too bad Ted Kennedy is still holding on…

  44. valdemar says

    Your wonderfully stupid president said of Mr Helsm:

    ‘in the dark days when the forces of tyranny seemed on the rise, Jesse Helms took their side…’

    I’m sure he didn’t mean that…

  45. Longtime Lurker says

    One of the most retrograde monsters EVER!

    Bucking Fush, with this comment:

    ‘President Bush called Helms “a kind, decent, and humble man.”‘

    Thirty-odd years from now will be when the real big party takes place.

  46. Azkyroth says

    “…and if there be a hell, it [has] received at last the demon soul of an unhallowed thing.” -H. P. Lovecraft, The Shunned House

  47. Azkyroth says

    I made some comments in a forum I frequent, here. Unfortunately they seem to have attracted the first misguided Helms defender I’ve encountered so far, although I wouldn’t precisely characterize him as a “concern troll.”

  48. Robert Byers says

    I don’t comment on side motivations but this thread by Myers and diciples is evil.
    Surely you have better be right that there is no God. To rejoice in the death of someone who never did anything to get arrested or did anthing but express common opinions is to seek out REAP WHAT YOU SOW.
    Since this Helms represented common opinions its as if you are all saying all people should lose their lives who have the same opinions. Then perhaps helping it along is not morally wrong. In short genicide on a great numbers of people is a legitamate option for wrong opinions or character . This is not about practical actions that hurt people.
    These senitiments must be what is expressed before any genocide ever anywhere.
    Its hatred. its murder.
    Jesse Helms therefore wins again with superior character and good form in striving for his issues.
    If he opposed the homosexual agenda well good. A majority does.
    If he opposed this or that well good if the cause was right.
    If he had the common opinions of the Southerners about segregation etc well on what grounds was he wrong. Today blacks say clearly they are a different people, African -American, and not just americans of a different colour. The old south said this.
    Today Africans and others insist identity is to be a factor in who gets what, deserves what, and segregate in their own group activities where ever they can. They only mingle because they have too to get the cooler stuff. There are black networks, schools, awards,and endless manifestations of segregated hearts and intents for the gain of their own. Just like the old south.
    Jesse Helms was right or more right then any opponents he ever faced on any issue.
    He will be the only Jesse,,so far in polotics etc, to ever be the good guy, the winner, a achiever by his own merits, a worthy American, a true man.
    Christians would never rejoice at death of opponents who have done no evil or close.
    So who is better then whom.

  49. Azkyroth says

    Robert, please see my comment here.

    Helms has “done no evil?”

    Are you mad? Or just a Poe?

    Joseph Stalin was never arrested for his crimes either. Should we give him a free pass?

  50. clinteas says

    Robert Byers No 65 babbled:

    //Jesse Helms therefore wins again with superior character and good form in striving for his issues.//
    //He will be the only Jesse,,so far in polotics etc, to ever be the good guy, the winner, a achiever by his own merits, a worthy American, a true man.//

    *looks at lump of molten metal that used to be my irony meter*

  51. Nick Gotts says

    I don’t comment on side motivations but this thread by Myers and diciples is evil. Liar Byers@65

    Hey, that’s good going – a lie and a self-contradiction in the very first sentence!

    Today blacks say clearly they are a different people, African -American, and not just americans of a different colour. The old south said this. – Liar Byers@65

    I’ll leave it to African-Americans to comment on Byers’ generalisation if they care to, but “the old south” said blacks were inferior, tried to stop them voting (actually a lot of this still goes on), and lynched them if they got “uppity”, as you very well know, liar Byers.

    If he opposed the homosexual agenda well good. – Liar Byers@65
    The agenda of being treated as equals.

    You are a lying racist scumbag bigot, Byers, just like Helms.

  52. Katkinkate says

    Most of the really bad criminals don’t get arrested. They are the ones with the power and resources to destroy the greatest numbers of lives and get away with it by owning the government or the law.

  53. MAJeff, OM says

    Robert, we’re all better than you and that worthless, vile monster Helms. Too bad he didn’t usffer more.

  54. MAJeff, OM says

    I love how it always becomes “he opposed the homosexual agenda” and not the real, “He actively fostered and celebrated the death of gay men.”

    The world is sooooo much better without Helms in it.

  55. MAJeff, OM says

    Azkyroth,

    There aren’t any gay men hanging out at that site are there?

    I just love the white-washing of this man’s racism. “He opposed civil rights.” He was a vile bigot who actively tried to make worse for people of color and attempted to retain the structures of white supremacy, even in his own daily life with other Senators (ask Carole Moseley-Braun).

    “He was against gay rights.” He actively worked against funding for HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention. This one goes beyond opposition to gay rights. Bill Frist opposed gay rights, John McCain has opposed pretty much all gay rights initiatives, but none of them did anything remotely as bad as Helms, who worked to make sure that gay men kept dying. He enjoyed our deaths. He saw them as good things, and actively worked to make sure that “god’s punishment” was carried out.

    “Well, I don’t agree with his opinions.” This one is the one that gets me, because it absolves Helms from the evils of his actions. They can maybe make him a worthwhile person with some bad ideas, instead of a rotten bully who put those ideas into practice at every opportunity. He practiced what he preached, and we’re all better off he’s no longer around to do that.

    The country didn’t lose some kind of noble dedicated public service. We lost nothing. We actually are slightly better off now.

  56. llewelly says

    What kind of evil did he [Jesse Helms] not get involved with?

    He didn’t eat babies. (His anti-AIDS funding policies helped kill hundreds of thousands of babies, but he didn’t eat them.)

  57. AdamK says

    “Is Jesse indeed a girl’s name where Throbb comes from? In addition to James, Jackson, and Ventura, there’s Jesse Owens, U.S. boy singer Jesse McCartney, and the guy who looks as if he’s gonna win the current season of _The Bachelor_. “Jesse” by Janis Ian is about a man; and indeed, most people named Jesse get it from the Bible character, David’s father.”

    Jesse was always a male name, as far as I know.

    Perhaps Throbb is thinking of “Jessie,” which is, I believe, how the common shorting of “Jessica” is usually spelled.

  58. Rey Fox says

    “To rejoice in the death of someone who never did anything to get arrested or did anthing but express common opinions”

    First of all, “common” does not necessarily equal “right” or “good”. Second of all, he was a damn Senator. If all that he ever did was “express common opinions”, as opposed to, you know, actually VOTING or WRITING BILLS, then I’d have to vote him out just for being lazy. Third of all, if a majority of people in this country are really and truly as hateful and regressive as Jesse Helms, then we are truly fucked. Thankfully, I’m more optimistic than you are.

    “Since this Helms represented common opinions its as if you are all saying all people should lose their lives who have the same opinions. Then perhaps helping it along is not morally wrong.”

    Nope. You made that logical leap all by yourself. Must have something to do with that tome of genocide and mayhem, The Bible, that you folks are always flogging.

    “If he opposed the homosexual agenda well good. A majority does.”

    Describe the “homosexual agenda” to us. Really. I’m dying to hear it. Point by point.

    “There are black networks, schools, awards,and endless manifestations of segregated hearts and intents for the gain of their own. Just like the old south.”

    Except that modern “segregation” is voluntary (that is to say, not forced on them in a patently unequal manner by an outside racial group) and based on the shared cultural heritage that comes from growing up in black families and, often, being born into predominantly black neighborhoods. Perhaps we should bus some of them to your church, Robert, because we’d hate for you to be segregating yourself and your fellow churchmates of whatever denomination you practice.

  59. MAJeff, OM says

    Describe the “homosexual agenda” to us. Really. I’m dying to hear it. Point by point.

    Well, the homosexual agenda that Jesse opposed was simply living.

  60. E.J. Throbb (17 3/4) says

    So,
    I was wrong about
    the name “Jesse”.
    Sorry
    about that.
    But not sorry,
    no,
    not even a tiny bit,
    about Jesse Helms.
    To him I still say,
    “Good riddance”.

  61. Azkyroth says

    There aren’t any gay men hanging out at that site are there?

    There are a few, but they’re from countries other than the US for the most part, and when they open their mouths about the issue of gay rights, they tend to make me think of a hypothetical black man born in Africa and unfamiliar with American history and culture asking “What’s the big deal about people running around in sheets? They just make themselves look foolish.”

  62. Global Warming Is A Scam says

    He was also responsible for The US not ratifying the Kyoto treaty since he considered Global Warming to be as he put it, “The Great Global Warming Swindle”.

    And he was right about that. The Kyoto sham would have been an economic disaster for the United States.

  63. llewelly says

    The Kyoto sham would have been an economic disaster for the United States.

    ah, yes, of course – good thing so many Americans bought SUVs instead … too bad they are now too expensive drive, and very difficult to sell used.
    I know it’s hard to believe, but even though switching to more efficient appliances, using less energy, etc, saves money on the gas bill, the power bill, and at the gas pump, leaving you with more money to spend on other things, it destroys the American Economy. No really, it does. Saving money is bad for the economy.

  64. Leslie in Godless Canada says

    Do you think the prospect of the First Darkie President looming in November struck Jesse down? I hope so, and I hope that if there is an Eternity he can spend it considering this.

  65. MAJeff, OM says

    Do you think the prospect of the First Darkie President

    you just brought back memories of the grandmother who died last year.

  66. Cappy says

    I believe it was Jesse Helms about 8 or 10 years ago who said something to the effect:”If your child develops an interest in other cultures, or other religions, or the environment, then they’re probably on drugs.”
    To which I replied,”If you have no interest in any of these, you’re probably a republican”.

  67. Hap says

    #83: I unfortunately continue to hear similar from relatively near current relatives in rural OH. (“Are you going to vote for that n…?” and related diatribes on the bad qualities of black people). I haven’t quite figured out how so few people are the cause of so many problems, well, the ones other than industries shipping jobs to nonunion employees or other places, Ford and GM going under like the Titanic, etc….

    I guess in four months we get to see exactly how many steps back from the 20th century we wish to take.

  68. Brian Macker says

    I liked Jesse Jackson’s comment:
    “We offer condolences to his bereaved family, but the senator had a chance to move toward a more perfect union and he chose the Confederacy.”

    Hymietown Jackson? Kinda hypocritical don’t you think. Both bigoted fools. Well maybe not. Jackson managed to make a good shakedown operation out by stirring up bigotry in his followers, and Helms made a career out of it too.

  69. says

    It is incorrect and mean spirited to state Jesse was against integration. He was actually opposed to emancipation.

    Ciao