What a jackass.
My parents once attended some function held in his honor; as a result, I have a little book about dear ol’ Jesse entitled “And the World Came His Way”. I’ve never read it.
I’m only sad because I one day wanted Jesse Helms, Jesse Jackson, and Jesse Ventura all locked in a small room for a week just to see what would happen.
[QUOTE=Sage Rat]
Hm, I just checked out his Wikipedia page and had to wonder a bit about their statement: “Firmly opposed to integration efforts in his own state, in other editorials Helms referred to the University of North Carolina as the ‘University of Negros and Communists.’ Although his editorials created controversy, they also made him popular with conservative voters, and Helms won a seat on the Raleigh City Council in 1957.” It was my understanding that previous to JFK, the Republican party was the one which most supported integration, so it seems a bit odd to link the gain of Republican voters to his racism as the Wikipedia article seems to do. More it seems like it might have been him who started to swing Democratic bigots to Republicanism because he sided with them on that issue, and his appeal to Republicans would have had more to do with his financial editorials more than his racial ones.
Or were North Carolina Republicans in the 50s simply not representative of the rest of the party at that time?
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No, he was a Democrat back then. He turned Republican after that…I’m not sure exactly when, but I would presume around the time they turned against civil rights in order to capture disaffected conservative southern voters..
[QUOTE=Sage Rat]
Or were North Carolina Republicans in the 50s simply not representative of the rest of the party at that time?
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Jesse was a Democrat in the Old Days. Back then the GOP was the Party of Lincoln. This continued until Nixon used his “Southern Strategy” (i.e. played the race card). Besides the northern Democrats were letting Black people vote and stuff.
So why would racist editorials attract conservatives?
[QUOTE=Paul in Saudi]
I went to WIkipedia to find some nice things to say about the man.
I didn’t find anything.
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[QUOTE=Paul in Saudi]
Will the Westboro Baptist Church have a Jesse in Hell page?
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That’s a very interesting question. I’d love to hear Phelps’ opinion of Helms.
Wait, here’s one thing, at least:
He was also an ardent supporter of Pinochet – he only seems to have been concerned with human-rights abuses when Communists were inflicting them – but that’s better than nothing.
[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
It wasn’t straight people dying.
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So AIDS is a gay disease? 
Regards,
Shodan
[QUOTE=Sage Rat]
So why would racist editorials attract conservatives?
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In a nutshell, because there are several different kinds of “conservatives,” with many points of difference but some Boolean intersection between them, and they have been forging strategic alliances ever since the Goldwater campaign.
There are some signs, now, that that coalition is starting to fracture, just as liberals/leftists/progressives of various stripes are starting to bury their differences and work together and reach out to some populist conservatives who share some of their goals – a story told in The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington, by David Sirota.
Let all good Americans make it their business to keep “Pinwheel” Jesse spinning in his grave! 
The consistent racist and homophobic bigotry really jumps off the page in that Wiki entry. No surprise he’s such a hero to the Freepers.
[QUOTE=Shodan]
Helms did more than most to make the UN something more than a hot air society for Third World despots.
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What in the referenced legislation makes the UN more of anything, good or bad?
When was the UN ever a “hot air society for third world despots?” That’s news to me, especially since the US was the key founding nation.
If Dante was writing the* Divine Comedy* today, the three people in the center of hell would be Jesse Helms, Jerry Falwell, and Ronald Reagan.
[QUOTE=Sage Rat]
So why would racist editorials attract conservatives?
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Conservative does not necessarily equal Republican.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
Guess who did.
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You can always count on the Freepers.
Please remember, when you think about nasty segregationists in the 1950s in the South, those guys were all Democrats. Racists shifted to the GOP when the Democrats went nuts with McGovern.
I note Helms’ death is not at the moment on CNN’s front page. The man was bypassed by history.
[QUOTE=Paul in Saudi]
Please remember, when you think about nasty segregationists in the 1950s in the South, those guys were all Democrats. Racists shifted to the GOP when the Democrats went nuts with McGovern.
I note Helms’ death is not at the moment on CNN’s front page. The man was bypassed by history.
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The Democrats were the conservative party then. Those people weren’t liberals.
I did not say they were.
[QUOTE=Shodan]
So AIDS is a gay disease?
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Yes, actually, in the spirit that I said “because straight people weren’t dying,” AIDS IS a gay disease. That spirit is in the spirit of mocking Helms’s homophobic opposition to AIDs.
Of course straight people were dying of AIDS in the US. Gay people were dying disproportionately, and his homophobia was his explicit reason for opposing AIDS research (the NYTimes editorial has the relevant quotes). It was only when he saw straight people as its primary victims in Africa that he became concerned.
Daniel