Over the extended holiday weekend, we learned that former North Carolina Senator Jess Helms had died. The nation was in mourning.Well, not the entire nation, just right wingers. Turns out that those of us on the left who remember Helms remember him correctly. He was the last holdout of the old segregationist south; an unrepentant racist, a demagogue, the father of the politics of Karl Rove and Lee Atwater. The difference between those mourning and those remembering history says more about the mourners than anything. Either they don't remember Helms correctly or they remember him just fine -- and approve.
Of course, the media hasn't been any help in telling us who Helms really was. Mainstream media outlets are calling him merely "controversial" -- or worse, just "a conservative icon." Left out of most accounts is the fact that Helms always won reelection by slim majorities -- similar to Bush's reelection -- by mobilizing white racists to turn out to the polls with attack ads and fearmongering.
The real Jesse Helms isn't being remembered...
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