Too bad...he'll miss Obama's Inauguration

I’m about to tell a rather un-PC joke that was quite popular at Speas Elementary School circa 1989:

A teacher announces that any student who can correctly identify the source of a famous quote can have Friday off from school. The first quote – “Give me liberty, or give me death.” An African American girl raises her hand and says, “Patrick Henry.” “That’s right,” says the teacher. “See you next week.” But the girl says she’ll come to school anyway, since she’s on the reduced-price lunch program and doesn’t want to miss a good meal. Fair enough, the teacher says. Next question – “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” “Franklin D. Roosevelt,” answers an African American boy. “That’s right,” says the teacher. “See you next week.” But he’s on the free lunch program, too, and so he says he’ll come to school Friday anyway.

At that point, a white boy in the back row mutters under his breath, “Who decided to give all these n***er kids free lunches?” Furious, the teacher says “Who said that?!?” “Jesse Helms,” says the white boy. “See you next week.”

There were kids in my class who couldn’t remember not to pee on themselves, but everybody knew that Jesse Helms was a mean-spirited bigot. (The News & Observer has a re-cap of his campaigns here.) He died early on the morning of July 4 (a pleasant Happy Birthday for my dad). I know that I should try to come up with something warm-hearted to say, sympathy for his family, etc. But I’m having trouble calling up anything but relief for the fact that there’s one less bigot in the world.

In his death, many conservatives are eulogizing Helms as the standard-bearer. That’s fine I guess, if the Republican Party wants to go on record that their platform is based on white supremacy. (I think Abe Lincoln might take issue with that, though…) Let me tell you what it was really like to grow up in Helms-land. When the representative that your state persists in sending to the Senate for 30 years says stuff like this, it’s a problem for two reasons – First, obviously, the rest of the country assumes that you agree with him. (BTW, Helms never got more than 55 percent of the vote in any election. And that was running against the guy the state's own Democrat party disavowed.)

The second effect is more destructive. See, culture comes from the top. Helms’ homophobia, sexism, racism and general ignorance are bad enough. But his total lack of guile in expressing these things – whistling “Dixie” in front of African American Senator Carol Moseley-Braun, for example, to “make her cry” – contributed to an atmosphere where such bullying was okay. Before Helms (and the larger “Southern Strategy” of which he was a part), Republicans were fiscal conservatives, intellectuals who may not have won all the time, but who at least could look themselves in the mirror. When the post-World War II Democrats in the South began to move away from their own century of bigotry, Republicans like Helms saw a vacuum and they exploited it. And the GOP became the party of regression, fear and hatred. So I guess, in a way, Jesse Helms is the reason I’m a progressive. So he’s got that going for him, which is nice.

It’s sad when any life ends. It’s sad that millions of children went without food or health care or decent schools because of "Senator No". It’s sad that Ryan White died knowing that a United States Senator called him a "sodomite" who deserved to die of AIDS (even though he was a child who contracted HIV from a transfusion). It’s sad that Mathew Shepherd died because of the climate that Helms helped create that told people it’s okay to kill someone different than you, because they’re not really human anyway. It’s sad to think about all the political dissidents in Central and South America who died with Jesse Helms whole-heartedly behind their killers.

If I were to extend sympathy to Helms’ family right now, I’d be lying. I’m still too wrapped up in sympathy for the people whose lives he hurt. So how about this...I'm sorry for the loss of an individual that was beloved by many on a personal level. But, as for what Jesse Helms represents? I find delicious irony in the fact that this gleeful oppressor of so many left this world on Independence Day.