Larry Harmon, Who Popularized Bozo, Dies at 83

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/04/arts/television/04bozo.html?ref=obituaries

I'm frightened and confused...

You took a brave stand. The mob was forming and clanging their shovels and were ready to disinter Helms and quarter the corpse and you started clanging Donne's bell.

Incivility does seem viral. When we base our behavior on those who debase us, we are the thing that hates us.

Howard Zinn once talked about the cruelty he saw in the "Good War," on both sides. It's not tit for tat. It's not even an eye for an eye. It's two extended families for an extended families. Today, it's two countries for two towers.

First, I'd just like to say I have admired you by way of your posts since I first found you here. I contiue to do so. Thanks for the intelligent and well-reasoned response. This is precisely what I was hoping for.

As for specifics of your post this time, I am in complete agreement: those people who voted for Jesse Helms did, indeed, share his thoughts and feelings on Negroes, "sodomites" and pretty much anyone and anything else which didn't square wth his perverse view of the world. For this we are all the poorer.

My only difference -- and in this case, it may not even be a difference, but perhaps a caveat of some sort, is the use of the word "tolerance." This drops the bar for the bigoted and hateful. I usually have a problem with the term, since who wants to be just tolerated? "Tolerance" is usually the last barrier between us and physical violence toward those with whom we find difference. However, in the case of your wording, I think it is exactly right. We tolerated Jesse Helms, to some extent. However, I still don't feel we should lower ourselves to his bottomless standard by hollering "Whoopie!" over his death. Your response to it, here in this post of yours, is entirely appropriate and exactly what one might expect from the sort of company one would hope to find here.

Thanks for this and, again, I agree one-hundred per cent with your sentiments as expressed. Especially as expressed by you.

Point and counterpoint. Thank you. This is an excellent beginning. But no, I am not gay -- or at least so far I still find myself perversely attracted to women. Racially I am quite a mess, really, but there is that "one drop" of Afrian blood, not to mention about a quart of American Indian. The rest is Scots-Irish, which of courses includes the Moorish "perfect polution" which shows up in the motto on the family coat of arms. But I digress...

When Jesse Helms denigrated black people, gay people, or any other sorts of people, he denigrated me, both as a human brother of those people and as an American who actually believes in the American ideals we routinely trample and which Mr. Helms apparently used as toilet paper. So if you still choose to tip your hat -- or wig -- I'm reciprocating in advance. Thank you for understanding my irritation at the predictable unseemliness, even though it is over the virtual grave of someone about whom I wish I'd never had to know.

If you're saying that agents of violence, like the KKK, are spurred by mouthpieces of violence, like Helms, I agree. In this regard, although no court will uphold it, I consider the mouthpieces of violence to have hands as bloody as klansmen.

Why do you assume that it's gay folks who are "viciously intolerant" in this thread?

Why not black folks?

Hispanics?

Women?

And why would 3 or 4 or 5 angry gay folks in this thread have you assuming that (ALL) gay folks are "viciously intolerant."

Wow, Adams, Jefferson and now Helms. All on the Fourth of July. Unfortunately, I don't think ol' Jesse is going to be seeing John and Thomas. But who am I to judge?

That's okay, their opponents are pretty viciously intolerant towards them. But of course since your probably a coward who won't come back, you'll never read this.

Often those on the right like to point out when Dems harshly disparage or insult people like Senator Helms that so-called agents of tolerance aren't being very tolerant.

I've often thought about this charge, and I have to say that I don't buy it.

Indulge me for a moment: are the right-wingers who argue that the left is hypocritical because we don't suffer hatemongers like Helms actually arguing that as purported 'agents of tolerance,' we lefties should tolerate being insulted and denigrated not only for our beliefs, but in many cases for having been born at all?

Tolerance doesn't mean sainthood. It doesn't mean suffering the rantings and ravings of those who rile up people that would wish us harm.

And don't kid yourself, AJCalhoun. The people that lynched blacks in the South shared Jesse Helms' views on "negroes." The people that crucified Matthew Shepard on that fence in Wyoming shared Jesse Helms' views on "sodomites." And you can damn well bet that the people who shoot and kill abortion doctors feel the way Helms felt about "baby-killers."

So no, I'm not going to tolerate those who wish me and my kind harm.

And if you don't think that Helms and his kind DID wish me and my kind harm, you're wrong.

Tolerance is not a suicide pact.

The correct phrase is: De mortuis nil nisi bonum.

It would appear that gays are pretty viciously intolerant towards their opponents.

If you're a gay, black man as you coyly suggest and you still muster compassion and restraint, I tip my hat to you. If I could doff my hair, I'd do that too.

Even if you're a staight, white guy, I still admire your restraint.

And I agree that this is a moment to discuss his mean-spiritedness and consequent divisiveness and how that's being replicated here.

"Compromise, hell! ... If freedom is right and tyranny is wrong, why should those who believe in freedom treat it as if it were a roll of bologna to be bartered a slice at a time?"

-Wonder what he would've thought about the FISA bill?

"I will never be silent about the death of those who cannot speak for themselves"

-Like the thousands who died under the right-wing dictatorships he supported?

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As for the person who said people like him are a part of this country, "like it or not," I'm afraid I don't like it one bit, and I'm sure they don't like sharing a country with us either. The whole point of a constitutional democracy is that you're all supposed to at least agree on some basic fundamental principles upon which the country is founded. But 200+ years later, we're still fighting the battle of the Enlightenment while the rest of the Western world has moved on.