Helms and Thurmon in '04!!! the mumbly old facist ticket!!!

[Guest guest]

MEDIA ADVISORY:

Media Downplay Bigotry of Jesse Helms

 

August 31, 2001

 

News that North Carolina's Jesse Helms will retire from the Senate when his

term is up in 2003 received polite coverage in mainstream media. USA Today

(8/22/01) described Helms' views as "unabashed and outspoken conservatism."

To the Washington Post (8/22/01), Helms is one of the Senate's "most ardent

champions of conservative causes...a man of bold colors and few pastels."

Curiously using the past tense, the Los Angeles Times observed, "he

personified the unvarnished, uncompromising, attack-dog brand of

conservatism." (8/22/01)

 

Most of the coverage alluded to Helms' unrepentant racism and homophobia--

though few called it that. Some outlets presented his bigotry as merely

accusations from political foes: "His opponents have accused him of using

race to win elections." (CBS Evening News, 8/21/01) Overall, most outlets

painted Helms as a conservative whose career has merely been punctuated by

controversial episodes, not as a demagogue whose career has been defined by

the politics of hate and reaction.

 

One exception was Washington Post columnist David Broder, whose August 29

column, headlined "Jesse Helms, White Racist," offered a glimpse into the

public record that many other reporters were side-stepping.

 

Broder offered a few examples of Helms' bigotry. There are many.

 

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."

 

In columns, commentaries and pronouncements from the Senate floor, Helms

sowed hatred and called names: The University of North Carolina was "the

University of Negroes and Communists." (Capital Times, 11/22/94) Black civil

rights activists were "Communists and sex perverts." (Copley News Service,

8/23/01)

 

Of civil rights protests Helms wrote, "The Negro cannot count forever on the

kind of restraint that's thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt

traffic, and interfere with other men's rights." (WRAL-TV commentary, 1963)

He also wrote, "Crime rates and irresponsibility among Negroes are a fact of

life which must be faced." (New York Times, 2/8/81)

 

Over the years Helms has declared homosexuality "degenerate," and

homosexuals "weak, morally sick wretches." (Newsweek, 12/5/94) In a tirade

highlighting his routine opposition to AIDS research funding, Helms lashed

out at the Kennedy-Hatch AIDS bill in 1988: "There is not one single case of

AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy." (States

News Service, 5/17/88)

 

Helms remonstrated ten female members of the House of Representatives to

"act like ladies" when they interrupted a Senate Foreign Relations Committee

hearing to demand support of a U.N. treaty against gender discrimination,

and subsequently had them removed from the hearing by Capitol police. (St.

Louis Post-Dispatch, 10/28/99)

 

And the man ABC News now describes as a "conservative icon" (8/22/01) in

1993 sang "Dixie" in an elevator to Carol Moseley-Braun, the first

African-American woman elected to the Senate, bragging, "I'm going to make

her cry. I'm going to sing Dixie until she cries." (Chicago Sun-Times,

8/5/93)

 

More recently, when a caller to CNN's Larry King Live show praised guest

Jesse Helms for "everything you've done to help keep down the niggers,"

Helms' response was to salute the camera and say, "Well, thank you, I

think." (Wilmington Star-News, 9/16/95)

 

Finally, Helms' strong if sometimes shadowy support for violent,

anti-democratic forces abroad, from South Africa to El Salvador, might have

given media outlets further pause in describing him as a mere conservative;

few probed his ties to groups that would more accurately be described as

fascist. One exception was an editorial in the Boston Globe (8/23/01):

"Helms' role in supporting foreign thugs such as Roberto D'Aubuisson, the

cashiered Salvadoran major who ran death squads responsible for savage

political murders, did lasting harm to America's good name. In South Africa,

Argentina, Mozambique, Honduras, and Nicaragua, Helms cooperated with

racists and fascists who have nothing in common with the ideals of American

democracy."

 

With 17 months remaining in his Senate term there will be many more

"send-offs" dedicated to Jesse Helms. It remains to be seen whether he will

continue to get kid glove treatment from the press, or if journalists will

choose to tell the unvarnished truth about Helms' career.