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Did he plan it? Did he struggle on life support until after the midnight hour, timing his last breath? Or had he been dead for days, his associates keeping the body on ice for the holiday announcement? Jesse Helms, dead on the 4th of July.
Helms would have appreciated the symbolism, confirming the his own mythic identity as a Proud American, but Helms' other legacy as a big fat bigot is well established. From his racist tirades on the radio and television in North Carolina during the 1950s and 60s, to his vicious homophobic rants of the 1980s and 90s, he left a highly quotable record of hate.
On the civil rights movement: "'Candy' is hardly the word for either the topless swimsuit or the Civil Rights Bill. In our judgment, neither has a place in America--unless we have completely lost our sense of morality."
"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 sexual politics and public health: "The government should spend less money on people with AIDS because they got sick as a result of deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct."
In death it's easy to dismiss Jesse Helms as a colorful buffoon or a relic of the bad old days of segregation and sexism, but that doesn't do Helms' bigotry justice.
Jesse Helms was an important bigot. He didn't just fume and huff. He used the language of cultural politics--called "morality" or "values" or just "freedom"--to shrink the state, reduce the social wage, enhance the interests of ruthless corporate profit mongering, and promote US military interventions around the world. He's the poster boy for how cultural politics works, not as an arena separated from the "real" political economy, but as the site of the language and emotion through which people live politics and economics everyday.
Read The Full Story at The Nation
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