Ta Ta Jesse Helms

[Alex]

As H.L. Mencken said "we must respect the other fellows religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart."

Respecting the privilege to hold ideas is not the same as given any respect to the validity of those ideas.

I have no problem at all using the moment of somebody's death to remind the world of their failures. When George Lucas goes the general coverage will be hagiographic and I'll be in some corner being scorned for reminding people that he didn't directly oversee a good movie after 1983. When Pope John Paul II died, I could acknowledge that in addition to be a huge malignancy in the world he also did many good things.

Yes, there is a place for respect and to an extent that has to do with who you're talking to. Here among us is one thing, if Jesse Helms granddaughter happened to be a member here we'd all treat the subject differently. And I didn't go out of my way to share my views of the pope with my Catholic friends. Honesty in personal expression is one thing, intruding on the grief of others is just rude.

But there is, in my opinion, a difference not just of degree but in type between resisting the surge of whitewashing that happens when someone dies with feeling personal pleasure that someone has died. Yes, sometimes the only way for a bad person's influence to end is through their death but all I really care about is the end of the influence and take no joy from the death. In this case, I am of the opinion that Helms's power of significant influence ended years ago and to the extent it still existed it didn't end with his death.

But yes, if compelled to comment on Helms's I'd say he was a colossal ass. The people of North Carolina were collosal asses in electing him 5 times, and his colleagues in Congress were collosal asses in allowing him to hold such sway over their proceedings.

In the end I don't care about the semantical differences (GC can pause here for the feeling of shock to pass) of "hate" vs. "disgust" vs. "anger." It is the same as asking if you and I both see "red" the same.