I'm just cracking up about the story that Jesse Helms is reputed to have swore that he was going to make Carol Mosley-Braun cry by singing 'Dixie'. Deeply offensive. Sure, deeply offensive - like stealing somebody's Nikes.
Stuff like this makes me laugh because it shows how defanged the politics of outrage have become. I crack jokes about the Coalition of the Damned and all sorts of radicals, but this is, after all, the USA, where our poor people are fat. So this is just another symptom of bourgie squabbling because basically nobody dies. Or to be more specific, if Jesse Helms represented a clear and present danger to the health, welfare and safety of millions of African Americans, you'd think one of them might have the temerity to take a potshot at him. Revolutionary rhetoric without revolutionary action is basically to be taken as seriously as action movies, which is to say, lowbrow entertainment. Which is why laughter is appropriate, especially since there are no plot twists worth speaking about. Except that the bad guy gets to die on the Fourth of July.
"Once upon a time, I marched with Doctor King!"
As much as I've laughed at such credibility cookies uttered by my older white liberal friends in the past, they do have the benefit of having faced death. And I seriously told one that he did the right thing at the right time last year. And I suppose I will continue to stare down lefties and radicals until such time as they are bold enough to resort to amateur terrorism and hit the streets with anything more potent than picket signs with bad grammar. Show me the torches and pitchforks and I will, like the Omega Man, rise from my chess games and wine glasses to see what the ruckus is all about. I suppose the ACLU at least knows how to fight properly in our un-chivalric republic where all the boys seemed to be named Sue.
I say all this in consideration of some attribution in retrospective of the Reagan Revolution to Jesse Helms. You see, since I vote Republican, I get email to which the ordinary Joe is not privy. Apparently some are given to believe that if Helms hadn't delivered NC to the Republicans, Reagan would have lost to Ford. Which isn't such a bad outcome depending upon how much you are willing to believe that the Soviet Union would not have collapsed under moderate Republican leadership. We might, sans Helms, be celebrating the Ford Revolution. But Helms, as fierce a butt-headed anti-communist as is sentiently possible, had his way and the rest is history. So Helms may be remembered for that.. .yeah right.
Helms will be remembered by a somewhat distant majority, as a intransigent racist. He might well be considered evil personified. But not evil enough to execute. So, I says, BFD.
Recent Comments