Not Jesse Helms

When I first read last week that conservative politician Jesse Helms was dead, I felt sad that the former governor of Minnesota and ex-WWF wrestler had passed on after providing me so many years of delight both in and out of the ring.  When I read that he was 89, I was surprised that the World Wrestling Federation had existed pre-WWII.  Then I realized I was thinking of Jesse “The Body” Ventura.  I also realized my interest level in politics declines sharply when it comes to people who weren’t even in a single Predator movie.

No:  The dead Jesse Helms was the longtime senator of North Carolina, and I guess the first sentence of this NYT story says it all:

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. (emphasis mine)

Here was a man who waged a political campaign against Modern Art, AKA “most of the artistic work reckoned anywhere from the early 17th century until the present time”(wikipedia).  Which, I guess says a lot for his conviction.  Most people would get exhausted from raging just against Cubism.

I am currently working on a self-help book for young people based on Helms’ life.  Basically it boils down to:  Study this man carefully, kids, learn what he believed in and how he lived his life–and do the exact opposite.

Senator Helms got all teary-eyed with nostalgia about segregation, filibustered the bill to make Martin Luther King Day a national holiday and opposed funding AIDS research because it was a Gay Disease, but did you know he also:

• Invented reality television
• knew about the design flaws in the Challenger space shuttle but kept them to himself until the day before that fatal launch, then told NASA officials but in kind of a mumble so people just thought he was going on about “that queer Warhol” again
• was so racist he only fathered one illegitimate black son
• Won the annual “boogie-woogie atop George Washington’s Grave” invitational tap dance competition twenty-eight years in a row.
• caused the Columbia space shuttle disaster