Southern man
better keep your head
Don’t forget
what your good book said
Southern change
gonna come at last
Now your crosses
are burning fast
Neil Young, “Southern Man” (Journey Through the Past)
Abraham, Martin, and John … and Jesse
The longtime employer of John McCain’s chief political strategist Charlie Black passed away today–Black previously served as an enthusiastic strategist for the wretched Jesse Helms, whose god-damned soul is winging hellward at this moment. Ben Smith sums up the nefarious relationship and McCain connection on Politico.
The, ummm, whitewashing of this man’s unholy soul has already begun (see the President’s befuddled eulogy below), but the Village Voice, leading with the homepage headline “Jesse Helms Finally Dies,” strikes exactly the right tone:
If we’re lucky, he took some of his bitter bigotry with him.
Jesse Helms, an unrepentant supporter of unnatural causes throughout his life, died of natural causes this morning at the age of 86.
The only sign of moderation ever shown by the longtime North Carolina senator was his decision to stop saying the word “nigger” when he was likely to be quoted in public settings.
The death of Helms is just about the best birthday present the United States could wish for on July 4. Free at last — of Jesse Helms.
(If that sounds rough, well, keep reading for some of Helms’ choice descriptions of the denizens of the Village, below).
Helms made his name dealing racism, not to put too fine a point on it (and oh that he lived to see North Carolina swing Democrat come November, and swing for Obama to boot!), and his personal bete-noir was of course none other than Dr. King. His lifelong antipathy–he stood foursquare against any holiday associated with MLK, and no doubt saw Martin resurrected when Nelson Manelela spoke before the U. S. Congress, a session publicly boycotted by the lifelong supportetr of the apartheid regime–is sufficient evidence not only of his hideous moral sensibility, but, actually, of his intelligence: unlike so many on the right and left, especially today, forty years after King’s murder, Helms had a pretty good idea of what MLK was all about, and understood that King wasn’t simply looking to some kumbayesque celebration of diversity on the other side of River Jordan. When Helms said, in 1963, that “”Dr. King’s outfit…is heavily laden at the top with leaders of proven records of communism, socialism and sex perversion, as well as other curious behavior,” he was onto something; I can’t speak to the perversions-and-curiosa, but Helm’s fiery denunciation of King two decades later (1983) is a lot closer to the mark than many of King’s contemporary admirers might be comfortable with:
Throughout his career King, unlike many other civil rights leaders of his time, associated with the most extreme political elements in the United States. He addressed their organizations, signed their petitions, and invited them into his own organizational activities. Extremist elements played a significant role in promoting and influencing King’s opposition to the Vietnam war-an opposition that was not predicated on what King believed to be the best interests of the United States but on his sympathy for the North Vietnamese Communist regime and on an essentially Marxist and anti-American ideological view of U.S. foreign policy (more here).
Here’s King, in what I’ve long considered his best speech (Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, April 4 1967 Riverside Church–read the whole thing!) :
But they asked — and rightly so — what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.
To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I am speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men — for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the one who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the “Vietcong” or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this one? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?
They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals, with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one “Vietcong”-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them — mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children, degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers…
Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken — the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
Helms was a savage, but from the standpoint of his own occult neo-trinitarian commingling of race, religion, and laissez-faire capitalism, King, and all that he stood for, could be nothing other than a mortal enemy.
I would like to say: Helms was the mortal enemy all that we stand for, we heirs to King’s sense and vision. Sadly, Helms goes to the grave victorious, in the City of Man if not the City of God. Americans have adamantly and pretty much unanimously forsworn giving up “the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investment.” A people who make up 4% of the world’s population and yet consume 25% of its resources must perforce commit its imperial legions to the four quarters of the globe, lest the indigenous peoples demand a living wage for their labors or a fair price for their resources. His death might give pause to those liberals busy castigating him for his outrageously racist, homophobic comments, as the Democratic Party, the financial establishment, the media, and, yeah, the whole military industrial complex goes on merrily perpetuating the vision of Helms and not Dr. King. The angry shade of Jesse Helms will wind round the world for some time yet, will haunt us until we ourselves reject not only racism but the materialism and militarism that lie at the very heart of what’s known as “globalization.”
You yourself are not a racist. Or a homophobe. You’re probably opposed to apartheid and bantuization, too, except in special circumstances, like Obama is, what with the pesky business of the West Bank and all that. But remember, this campaign season, which candidate recently said that he “loves” free trade; which candidate promises to increase the insane defense budget; which candidate recently declared that he would maintain the Cuban embargo; which candidate has said he would expand US combat operations into yet another country; which candidate has said he would leave a residual force of American soldiers (actually, he plans to continue to use mercenaries) in Iraq ad infinitum; which candidate’s campaign war chest is funded primarily by contributions from banks and investment firms and telecom and etc.
And ask yourself whose vision is being fulfilled by that candidate–by both candidates: is that the vision of Martin Luther King, or of Jesse Helms?
Jesse wins, the world loses.
I saw cotton
and I saw black
Jesse Bequeaths Charlie to John
The racist’s racist par excellence, Helms never really changed his stripes, as FAIR notes:
As an aide to the 1950 Senate campaign of North Carolina Republican candidate Willis Smith, Helms reportedly helped create attack ads against Smith’s opponent, including one which read: “White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races.” Another ad featured photographs Helms himself had doctored to illustrate the allegation that Graham’s wife had danced with a black man. (The News and Observer, 8/26/01; The New Republic, 6/19/95; The Observer, 5/5/96; Hard Right: The Rise of Jesse Helms, by Ernest B. Furgurson, Norton, 1986)
Ancient history? No. Helms remains unapologetic to this day. Forty years after the Smith campaign, Helms would win election against black opponent Harvey Gantt with another ad playing to racist white fear– the so-called “white hands” ad, in which a white man’s hands crumple a rejected job application while a voiceover intones, “You needed that job…but they had to give it to a minority.”
Chief McCain strategist Charlie Black’s role (Ben Smith again):
1990: Black Advised Jesse Helms. As He Ran Controversial “Hands” Ad Against Black Candidate. Newsday reported that Helms, “through a series of blistering advertisements unleashed just days before, had beckoned the long-simmering issue of race to the surface of this senatorial contest. In doing so, Helms had hurled the campaign into its most bitter and acrimonious phase to date, namely by labeling his opponent, falsely, an advocate of racial job quotas and accusing him of conducting a ‘secret campaign’ in the black community. … On the television commercial, the camera zones in on a white man’s hands, crumpling what apparently is a job rejection letter. The announcer then intones: ‘You needed that job and you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota. Is that really fair? Harvey Gantt says it is,’ the message continues. ‘Gantt supports Ted Kennedy’s racial quota law that makes the color of your skin more important than your qualifications.’” Black, an adviser to the campaign and a consultant for the Congressional Club – Helms’s political machine – insisted the race would come down to turnout: “‘What it’s going to come down to is turnout,’ said Charles Black, chairman of the Republican National Committee and a Helms adviser. ‘It’s, no question, the biggest challenge at this point.’” [Newsday, 11/4/90]
Black Defended “Hands Ad.” Black defended Helms’s “Hands” television ad, which featured white hands crumpling a job rejection letter and linking Helms’s black opponent to racial job quotas. Asked about the ad on the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour, Black said, “Well there is nothing racial about the campaign.” When asked if there was anything improper about the ad, Black said, “Of course not.” Another guest on the show, DNC Chairman Ron Brown, pressed Black again, saying, “You are a principal adviser of Jesse Helms. Would you advise him to run that kind of ad, Charlie? Do you approve of that ad, Charlie?” Black responded, “I advised Jesse Helms to do what he’s always done.” [MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour, 11/5/90]
Helms and the Great Hate
Chuckling commentators are remarking left and right that , oh boy, Helms may sounded outrageous, but, dammitall, you gotta give the good old boy credit for standing by his convictions. I generally don’t like the too facile comparisons to Nazism, but in this case, that’s rather like saluting Himmler for his loyalty to the cause. The man was while; his ideas were vile; those who salute(d) them are vile, e.g., Trent Lott, who declared that “Jesse Helms has been the conscience of our party for thirty years,” which, after reading the following, will tell you pretty much everything you need to know about the Republican’s Party moral foundations and perspectives; Pandagon publishes a few choice quotes:
“Unless our Negro citizens submit more easily than we predict they will, North Carolina does not have the simple choice between segregated schools and integrated schools. Our only choice is between integrated public schools and free-choice private schools. … The decision will have been made by a very small minority of people who are hell-bent on forced integration.””
“To rob the Negro of his reputation of thinking through a problem in his own fashion is about the same as trying to pretend that he doesn’t have a natural instinct for rhythm and for singing and dancing.”
- Helms responding in 1956 to criticism that a fictional black character in his newspaper column was offensive.“I shall always remember the shady streets, the quiet Sundays, the cotton wagons, the Fourth of July parades, the New Year’s Eve firecrackers. I shall never forget the stream of school kids marching uptown to place flowers on the Courthouse Square monument on Confederate Memorial Day.”
..and I saw black
Tall white mansions
and little shacks.
Southern man
when will you
pay them back?
I heard screamin’
and bullwhips cracking
How long? How long?
Below, some not-at-all-atypical quotes from Betty Bowers–visit “her” site for more:
They should ask their parents if it would be all right for their son or daughter to marry a Negro.”
– In response to Duke University students holding a vigil after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, 1968
“It’s their deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct that is responsible for the disease.”
– Justifying his refusal to give financial support to families of AIDS victims.
“Homosexuals are weak, morally sick wretches.”
– 1995 radio broadcast“She’s a damn lesbian. I am not going to put a lesbian in a position like that. If you want to call me a bigot, fine.”
– Explaining why he was opposing the appointment of a woman for a cabinet post.
Lily Belle,
your hair is golden brown
I’ve seen your black man
comin’ round
Swear by God
I’m gonna cut him down!
I heard screamin’
and bullwhips cracking
How long? How long?
Mother Jones had neatly summed up the creep and the secret to his success back in 1995::
How did someone so mean-spirited end up in a position to act on his divisive politics? For the most part, Helms wins political battles by keeping the spotlight on the morality plays he stages. To hear conservatives tell it, Helms is a personal friend of Jesus Christ, a populist defender of the little guy, and a bitter opponent of big government.
Shifting the spotlight reveals a different Helms. A former bank lobbyist whose fundraising machine has been fined for breaking federal campaign laws, Helms favors a big-spending, activist government–one that aids those in economic power. He voted to bail out the savings and loan industry, for example, and has seldom met a big-ticket missile system he didn’t like. By contrast, he has voted to slash school lunches for impoverished children, medical care for disabled veterans, prescription drugs for the elderly, and wages for working families (see “On the record,” below).
“Looking at the record, people ought to understand that Helms is not representing them on the great majority of issues,” says Rep. Melvin Watt, a North Carolina Democrat. “They perceive that he stands up for the little guy, but he really stands up for rich people rather than poor and working-class people.”
We end with the President, who, never one to miss an opportunity for asinine effrontery, weighs in with a typically pathetic and utterly inaccurate summation of this pig’s life and character:
“Jesse Helms was a kind, decent, and humble man and a passionate defender of what he called “the Miracle of America.” So it is fitting that this great patriot left us on the Fourth of July. He was once asked if he had any ambitions beyond the United States Senate. He replied: ‘The only thing I am running for is the Kingdom of Heaven.’ Today, Jesse Helms has finished the race, and we pray he finds comfort in the arms of the loving God he strove to serve throughout his life.”
In Jesse’s memory, the great Nina Simone (great interview, read it through) and “Strange Fruit”:
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