Facing South says the collective reaction to Jesse Helms’ death speaks volumes about the state of race relations and social progress in our country. They set the record straight in three myths about Jesse Helms (and what they say about us):
To say Sen. Helms held deep prejudices against many — especially African-Americans and gays and lesbians — isn’t a matter of opinion; it’s all part of the historical record. As Gary Robertson of the Associated Press reported, Helms — unlike other hold-overs from the segregationist era — never changed his views in opposing civil rights. Up until his last Senate campaign, stirring up racial division — along with homophobia and anti-communism — was a centerpiece of Helms’ political M.O.
As the quintessentially-establishment columnist David Broder noted upon Helms’ retirement in 2001, the senator who up into the 1990s was giggling at the word “nigger” and saying that “homosexuals are weak, morally sick wretches” was “the last prominent unabashed white racist politician in this country.”
They go on to point out that Helms was neither the “straight talker” nor the “unique iconoclast” he was made out to be.
It is a deep irony that many of the political leaders and media commentators who praise Jesse Helms’ “honesty” so readily trade in myths, rather than facts, in remembering his political legacy. In a year when many are wondering whether an African-American man can win the presidency, we clearly need more, not less, honesty in confronting the state of race and social progress in our country.
Meanwhile we’ve got “a long-time, regular, sensible caller” to The Michelangelo Signorile Show claiming in all seriousness that the late senator was a cross-dresser. And I can tell you from personal experience that I’ve witnessed stranger truths in my day.
But for those in need of documentary evidence, Martin Lewis has gathered quite a bit of it. Not about cross dressing, but about the odious bigotry and prejudice that made him unworthy of the accolades he received — some of it as recently as this week when Liddy Dole proposed naming an AIDS bill after him. (That earned her #3 in Keith Olbermann’s “Worst Person In The World” countdown.)
RELATED: Crooks & Liars on Dems, Republicans, and the ‘party of civil rights’ — read through to understand the final line, “Ultimately, this isn’t much of a campaign pitch: ‘Vote Republican: The Party Was Right Before It Was Wrong.’”