Jesse Helms is publishing his memoirs. The headline of the AP article covering this reads:
Helms mea culpa on AIDS, not integration
He regrets gay labeling, but not stand against desegregation
So Jesse is not sorry that he opposed integration – he feels it would have been better to just wait and any decade now the darkies would have been able to move up to the front of the bus “naturally”.
But let’s take a closer look at what AP characterizes as his “regret” over “gay labelling”.
Helms also was an outspoken opponent of laws to protect homosexuals from discrimination and of funding for AIDS research, but he writes in the book that his views evolved during his final years in the Senate. He cited friendships he developed with North Carolina evangelist Franklin Graham and rock singer Bono, both of whom got him involved in the fight against the AIDS epidemic in Africa.
“Until then,” Helms writes, “it had been my feeling that AIDS was a disease largely spread by reckless and voluntary sexual and drug-abusing behavior, and that it would probably be confined to those in high-risk populations. I was wrong.”
“Until then,” Helms writes, “it had been my feeling that AIDS was a disease largely spread by reckless and voluntary sexual and drug-abusing behavior, and that it would probably be confined to those in high-risk populations. I was wrong.”
Umm – the only way that I can process that apology is:
Everything was great as long as I thought that only fags got AIDS – I didn’t realize that other people got it too.
Sorry about that.
Man- I feel so much better after that apology.
about that? That’s real spiritual growth.
I’m interested in the desegregation thing too.
Got any money quotes?
I put a link to the article at the end – this stands out
“We will never know how integration might have been achieved in neighborhoods across our land, because the opportunity was snatched away by outside agitators who had their own agendas to advance,” according to the uncorrected proof.
Yeah Jesse, those damn outside agitators coming down here and making us treat others with dignity and equality. I hate when that happens.
It embarrassing that North Carolina kept returning that man to Washington. Such stunning ignorance.
Hunt in 1984, Gantt in 1990 and 1996, Bowles in 2002.
And a couple times, we came soooo close.
I’m a tarheel now too. I didn’t mean the people of NC were ignorant; I meant Helms.
The name Jesse Helms makes me want to go and take a shower immediately. I was born and have lived in NC most of my life. I was so glad when he left politics…of course now we have Liddy Dole and Richard Burr in the Senate, I think that they are both just Jesse clones of a sort.
I’m in Raleigh. Do you still live in NC?
Some time ago, I wrote something about Helms with “(is that fucker dead yet)” behind his name. Someone suggested we start using ITFDY about folks like him…
At a Creating Change conference in Detroit in the mid-90s (don’t remember exact year I was there) Leah DeLaria was performing one night: “So, Jesse Helms was diagnosed with cancer. I say we all send hiim a pack of Marlboros as a get-well gift.”
It was big and ugly and bit anyone who tried to touch it.
Why she kept it, other than feeling sorry for it, I’ll never know.