Happy Fourth or as It Will Come to Be Known around Here: “Happy Jesse Helms Finally Called the Wrong Attendant ‘Niggra’ Day”

Jesse Helms, the former North Carolina senator with the courtly manner and mossy drawl who turned his hard-edged conservatism against civil rights, gay rights, foreign aid and modern art, died early Friday. He was 86 in human years. …

Perhaps his most visible accomplishments in the Senate came two decades apart. One was a 1996 measure that tightened trade sanctions against the Marxist government of Fidel Castro in Cuba. The other, a 1973 amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act, prevented American money from going to international family planning organizations that, in his words, “provide or promote” abortion. …

But as tough as he could be in the political theater, Mr. Helms could exhibit a softer, warmer, even impish side in his personal dealings, even with political adversaries.

In 1963, after 21 years of marriage, Mr. Helms and his wife, Dorothy, adopted a disabled child, Charles, after they read a newspaper article in which the child, who was 9 at the time, plaintively said that he wanted a mother and a father for Christmas.

Later, upon finding out the child did not have the trust fund he was reputed to have, Helms reportedly said, “Well, just fuck me hard, then.” It is to the senator's credit that he did not return the boy or lock him in the attic, as he had done with his own mother when she had become a burden.

In later years, the boy, Charles, became a source of great comfort to Helms. In fact, when he was beset with political woes or questions, Helms would take Charles out in the backyard and throw rocks at him. It cleared his mind.

Which is the type of thing I expected to read in Helms' obituary, but, no, there's nothing like that in there. It's a tribute to us as a species that out of sympathy for one another or out of recognition of our shared fate, we let the evil that we do die with us and the good live on. I find that admirable. But there was so little good in Jesse Helms, we shouldn't bother in his case. He was a hypocrite, a charlatan, a homophobe, and a racist, a festering boil on the ass of electoral politics that the good people of North Carolina never saw fit to lance. The only good he ever did in life was die. His obituary writer should have left it at that.

Although I'm not big on the afterlife, for Jesse's sake, I'm hoping there is one. Normally, my agnosticism can't accommodate such things, but I'm willing to put reason aside and live with the cognitive dissonance if that's the price of joy thinking of him in Hell gives me. And it gives me great joy.

Anyway, here's to you, Jesse. Wherever you are in the eternal ever after, I hope you're in the Colored section.