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• Saturday, July 5, 2008 09:24 AM

  One More Unrepentant Bigot Dies

  I've found this to be true:

  If someone CAN be kind or gracious or thoughtful, that means that in general, THEY ARE NOT.

  Jesse Helms, it is said could be kind and compassionate. Those who say this are of course attempting to say that there was another side, another layer to him, that he was somehow, a more complex and nuanced human being.

  Ummm, no.

  There was no "nuance" to Sen. Helms. No shades to his personality. No rich textures to his character. He was a mean-sprited, hateful, bigoted old coot who believed with all his heart that America was not intended for people who are not white male heterosexuals. He not only believed that, he fought for that white supremacist ideal for 30 years in the Senate and long before he entered politics. Those here who go on about how "impolite" it is to speak ill of the dead should remember that the GOP's Senator from North Carolina would be more than impolite to anyone here posting simply because we do not fit his ideal. Were he still able to work in politics, he would be doing precisely what he had done before: making it more difficult to just live free in this country. So a pox on this faux "civility". Jesse Helms is dead, at long last. The toast that we raise to celebrate his passing is the same that we will raise when George Bush leaves the White House. Is there actually anyone here who will be "civil" about that?

  Didn't think so.

  —independent Read independent's other letters
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