Jesse Helms, dead at last

The following letter to the editor was published in today's News and Observer.  The only problem was they left off the key lines in the quote from H.L. Mencken.  I also wrote a piece about the day Jesse tried to get me fired at UPI, which they were going to run, but I guess didn't because of the letter to the editor I'd already sent.  I'll post that story later today.  Laura Belle, and Jenny, glad to SOMEbody's reading my blog..........loveya. uncle p.Before the media elevate Jesse Helms to sainthood, we should remember all those who were denied their rights and harmed by his decades of  mean-spirited racism and sexism that did untold damage to the good name of North Carolina and the South.  There were the blacks he ridiculed in their efforts for equal rights,  there was the mother of an AIDS victim whom he told, “I’m sorry your son chose to play Russian roulette with his life.”   Ever since the man went into politics, we've heard these ultimate rationalizations for his bigotry:  "you knew where he stood;" and "at least he was sincere in his beliefs." Before the rhetoric gets too thick, it is well to recall what H.L. Mencken wrote on the death of an earlier demagogue, William Jennings Bryan:  "This talk of sincerity, I confess, fatigues me.  If the fellow was sincere, then so was P.T. Barnum.  The word is disgraced and degraded by such uses.  He was, in fact, a charlatan, a mountebank, a zany without sense or dignity."