He hated blacks, gays, Native Americans and thought rights for women was a sick joke. He voted in support of apartheid. He despised the National Endowment for the Arts and tried several times to disband it. He opposed funding for AIDS research (although he later backed down slightly in his final year in the Senate and did support low cost anti-retrovirals for Africa). He thought smoking nicotine was perfectly safe. He openly called for the assassination of Bill Clinton. He was, in short, everything that even Ronald Reagan didn't dare to try to get away with.
Oh, yeah ... he was also a Freemason; so he hated Catholics too.
About the only thing one could agree with him on was his absolute opposition to Communism -- although with Cuba he took it way too far.
His name was Jesse Helms, the former Senator from North Carolina. And he died today at 86.
RIP ... but it'll be God who will have to forgive him, because a lot of people including myself can't. I'm not exactly celebrating either however; it would take someone like Robert Mugabe dropping for me to buy a brewski.
Frankly with Helms' shadow now gone, North Carolina may have become just a bit easier for Barack Obama to win in the fall.
Vote for this post at Progressive Bloggers.
No comments:
Post a Comment