Bad Baby Eddie! Nice babies don't celebrate one's passing, even when the deceased was an unrepentant racist. Rest in peace, Senator.

Embarassing, principally because it is recommended. The poster should be suspended. The recommenders should hang their heads in shame. I was taught to forgive the deceased without having to forget their transgressions. Why is it cool for some to be nothing but indecent? Rest in peace Senator Helms and to his family I wish them strength.

So long Jesse, don't forget your white sheets.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1995/05/bates.html

Oh, to hell with decorum. When a real SOB dies, you're allowed to say "good riddance." Not on the front page, but in private -- and this is private enough for me.

Good riddance.

Jesse Helms is dead. Certainly his family will miss him. I wish them well. What of the thousands who died because of the people Helms supported like Jonas Savimbi, Augusto Pinochet, Raul Cedras, D'Aubuisson and may others? Helms also supported social systems (segregation and Apartheid) in which entire groups of people were denied rights as human beings.

Sometimes it's hard to tell when people are just being contrarian. There's no point in eulogizing a person who caused so much misery for others. If someone was a bastard in life, they are surely continue to be a bastard after they stopped living. Whether or not you dwell on that fact is, of course, another matter.

The end of Helms' life wasn't even like, say, Wallace's.

It is sad to see such a mean-spirited post at the top of the reader blogs.

It's a wonder it got up here.

Maybe.

One other thing that should be pointed out:

There are many people that feel that without Helms helping Reagan win the NC primary in 1976, Reagan's political career might have been over. And Reagan really redefined the map political for the country for a generation -- to the present.

One last Jesse Helms's story:

After Carol Mosely-Braun (D.-Ill.), the only African-American senator, defeated a bill that would have extended a federal patent on a Confederate flag insignia, Pat Buchanan accused her of "putting on an act" by linking the Confederacy to slavery. "The War Between the States was about independence, about self-determination," Buchanan asserted (New York Post, 7/28/93). "How long is this endless groveling before every cry of 'racism' going to continue before the whole country collectively throws up?"

Soon after the Senate vote on the Confederate flag insignia, Sen. Jesse Helms (R.-N.C.) ran into Mosely-Braun in a Capitol elevator. Helms turned to his friend, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah), and said, "Watch me make her cry. I'm going to make her cry. I'm going to sing 'Dixie' until she cries." He then proceeded to sing the song about the good life during slavery to Mosely-Braun (Gannett News Service, 9/2/93; Time, 8/16/93).

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1346

While no one is saying people should wish other people dead, it seems the height of hypocrisy to feel "sorry" that Helms died. If you want to be that kind-hearted and empathetic and forgiving, do it for when the person is alive.

i was taught to wish him well on the other side.

but on this side, jesse hated. people died and suffered because of that man.

and you forgive those that ask forgivness. not sure he asked. mebbe i missed it.

It's hard to understand the posters here who think that some decorum is owed to Jesse Helms. I can only think they don't know American history. How can one read the various posts here about the "real" Jesse Helms and not comment on who is was?

What if it were David Duke who died? Would these posters be angry if he were dismissed? I guess no. Not that we will find out. What they don't understand is that Helms was a David Duke who got to the Senate. So easy to breeze in and not read what others have posted. Because if one has read what has been posted here about Helms, then that would be the important thing upon which to comment. Bad manners. Bad history.

Meanness, which used to be "common" (still is in some places) is what Jesse Helms appealed to. That's how he won elections. If it were left to the likes of Jesse Helms, people like me would be left behind as not human or perhaps partly human and therefore not deserving of full "human" rights.

My point is not to go all 28 days on him and also not go all worshipful of him either simply because he died of old age. He had the luxury of such a death. Many did not because of his support of various dictators around the planet. His support had consequences, his beliefs had consequences and his death does not mitigate those consequences.