Jesse Helms, the bigoted, hate filled GOP senator from North Carolina, USA, finally shuffled off the mortal coil yesterday to head down to the Jerry Falwell bored again pig roast in H-E-double hockey sticks:
…this is from Rockrap.com,where someone stood up and spilled on “Bono”:
President Bush described Helms as “a kind, decent, and humble man. So it is fitting that this great patriot left us on the Fourth of July.”
Bono agrees with Bush. Bono called Helms a “good friend” and took him out to dinner and brought the Senator and his staff to a U2 concert as his special guests. Bono the anti-poverty crusader dismissed as “cynics” anyone who didn’t see the value in a rock star working with Helms, who did as much as any other single person to increase the world’s growing gap between rich and poor. Maybe that’s why Bono, who legally avoids paying taxes to help the Irish poor by putting his money in a Dutch tax shelter, liked Helms so much.
Will Bono sing at Helms’s funeral?
…this is from The Atlantic, and I agree 100%..let them wallow in their own swill:
One fascinating thing about the death of Jesse Helms is the conservative reaction. One might expect that Helms’ death would prompt from conservatives the sorts of things that I might say if, say, Al Sharpton died — that he and I had some overlapping beliefs and I don’t regard him as the world-historical villain that the right does, but that he’s a problematic guy and I regard him and his methods as pretty marginal to American liberalism. But instead conservatives are taking a line that I might have regarded as an unfair smear just a week ago, and saying that Helms is a brilliant exemplar of the American conservative movement.
And if that’s what the Heritage Foundation and National Review and the other key pillars of American conservatism want me to believe, then I’m happy to believe it. But it reflects just absolutely horribly on them and their movement that this is how they want to be seen — as best exemplified by bigotry, lunatic notions about foreign policy, and tobacco subsidies.
from res ipsa @ Rising Hegemon, who wisely instructs us not to speak ill of the dead..rather, let them do it for themselves:
Jess Helms (R - Of Course) on some of his fellow citizens:
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.”
On Carol Mosely-Braun, the first African-American female elected to the U.S. Senate:
“I’m going to make her cry. I’m going to sing ‘Dixie’ until she cries.”
On the then-president of the United States:
“[Clinton] had “better not show up around here [Fort Bragg] without a bodyguard.”
On the SCLM:
“The New York Times and Washington Post are both infested with homosexuals themselves. Just about every person down there is a homosexual or lesbian.”
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and from my fellow Chicagoan, driftglass..this picture and comment neatly summarizes Helms’:
Helms was a swine for all seasons who passionately believed that this
was what America should look like forever and ever.
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Sorry about being the comment aggregator today…but that man was a bigoted pustule on the back of this country..and these great bloggers have captured it much better than I can..not too much in the media about THAT now ..was there?
And Gebus Christy…yesterday (4th of July) on the Gnus all the yap about how ‘merika is “past the race thing”. The truth is that people YOU (and I) know personally or work with won’t vote for an African American, won’t vote for a woman, won’t vote for anyone who isn’t a white anglo saxon bored-again Gebus rapture is a comin corporate rep asshole, which is a good description of John McSame. I don’t know fer sure duude ’bout the Rapture part..sorry.
It’s going to get real ugly.. real soon. Time to stand up.
bummed
…so disappointing..
