[Boss Radio]

Hatred is a human emotion. It's going to manifest itself in everyone, like love, or fear, or whatever. Glee? Heartburn?

I hate lots of things: Mint flavored ice cream. People who wear too much cologne. Mornings. Tea. Camping. Charlie Sheen. Many, many things. But I'm ok with it.

The metaphor that we have been playing volleyball with is a pure hypothetical construct. Nobody here HATES Jesse Helms because (I'm guessing) nobody here knew him personally, or ever met him.

That being said, pretty much everyone here HATES what he stood for, and what he used as his political ammunition for decades. He used you. He used me. He used all of us, and we paid him to do it.

Since he was a public figure, he's up for grabs like Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Carrot Top. Lots of people have no problem hating Britney, or Carrot Top, or the Verizon "Can You Hear You Now" guy. Show of hands: who among us doesn't hate the Verizon guy?

And how many of us hate George Bush on a daily basis?
Thought so.

But to hate the late Jesse Helms suddenly inspires an almost Christ-like reflexive response to give thought and pause and be the better person, which is admirable. Heck, the bible even says that. And Helms waved that bible as his own personal weapon and shield. You can try all you want to listen to him and his believers respectfully and then eloquently make your point...

But he sure as hell didn't listen to you when he was alive. Now he really ain't gonna listen.

A George Bushian oversimplification would be: People who hate are bad. Haters are bad. Hating haters is bad becase then we are as bad as the haters because we hate them.

I disagree.

HATE with all your heart the kind of BLIND HATRED that Helms spewed. Let it make you mad. See red. Fight it with words, with deeds, with songs, and political cartoons. Mock it. Lampoon it. Make it preposterous - as laughable as driving a Lincoln Navigator with a baby sealskin interior. Make that kind of HATRED go out of fashion.

Pretending that we somehow should not hate or don't have the capacity to hate is just wrong. We are human. We are programmed with a menu of emotions including the capacity to both love and hate.

Emotions have dangerous flipsides: anxiety, meet depression. Love, meet hate.

So, likely nobody here hates Jesse Helms, the man.

But 99% of the people here HATE what he believed, and the ongoing damage that his beliefs caused, and continue to cause.

Everyone here should HATE what he stood for. He's unimportant in the cosmic scheme - he was just a two-bit flesh and blood vessel filled with bad ideas which he spewed forth while we, the taxpayers, paid him to do so.

And you know what else? Either he really hated you and me and all of us...or he could really care less, and was just pandering his poison to his hard line constituents.

Either way, he was a very bad apple.

I'm personally glad he's gone.

As a public figure and role model, he belongs to us - to love, to hate, to respect...

And yes, if we wish, to draw a caricature of him, gutted and filled with candy-flavored condoms and made into a giant Safe Sex Mussolini-like pinata.

He's just a stupid dead guy.

But never forget what that stupid dead guy stood for.

And HATE it.

Amen.