One is told not to speak ill of the dead, and even the obit writers of this ill-mannered site usually find some praiseworthy note--Hitler was kind to animals!--in even the shabbiest of lives. But it would be dishonest to pretend that Jesse Helms was anything other than a caricature of a Southern bigot.
He was a sour troll and a bigot, and it's a testament to every rotten thing about this country that for a quarter century, he was one of the most powerful people in American politics.
July 5, 2008 5:05 AM
