quote:

That's okay, Jhud. We simply think differently.

I will say that on a large number of pages on the internet there is active discussion surrounding the incredible whitewashing and softballing of his legacy.

I happen to agree with that.

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I just think if one is going to criticize, context is important.

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Could you clarify what you mean? (I'm not being snarky, honest)

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What things did you disagree with?

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Based on his public performance and statements, I think Mr. Helms was much more onerous in error than your parents. Your father made progress. Your mother you sadly said not so much. However, you mother was not affecting public law and society in a powerful position.

As I stated earlier: I'm sure that he supported some issues of import and conservatism that were not racially motivated. However, the truth is many of his actions appear to have been. And that is something that those that have worked with him had said posthumously.

It wasn't a "small" little character flaw. It wasn't something easily overlooked or waived away.

Perhaps you missed my added question at the end of the last post?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Jhud

quote:

Based on his public performance and statements, I think Mr. Helms was much more onerous in error than your parents. Your father made progress. Your mother you sadly said not so much. However, you mother was not affecting public law and society in a powerful position.

As I stated earlier: I'm sure that he supported some issues of import and conservatism that were not racially motivated. However, the truth is many of his actions appear to have been. And that is something that those that have worked with him had said posthumously.

It wasn't a "small" little character flaw. It wasn't something easily overlooked or waived away.

Perhaps you missed my added question at the end of the last post?

I did miss it - and responded above.

One thing I have always found interesting about the white southern psyche (and I say this, as I said, as a Northern white boy who often found himself at odds with said psyche) is that it has as much to do with not being told what to do as it had to do with ideas about race.

I don't know that Jesse Helms was bothered as much about the idea of integration as he was about having a bunch of Northern politicians come in and attempt to rearrange the state of North Carolina. This idea was probably more prevalent than we understand.

That being said, the reality from the black perspective was the pace of change in the South was horribly insufficient, and his failure to comprehend that was probably his greatest failing.

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Jack, your comments are important in understanding people like Helms. Some people naively believed that segregation would "work it's way out" while others were true racists. The average white Southerner did resent the feds (in the 1950's many still had living relatives whose grandparents had fought in the War of Northern Aggression). However most also recognized the wrongfulness as it was presented more openly in the media. I am old enough (oh, no, here we go again) to have attended segregated schools and some of the tension when they were finally integrated in my home town in 1965.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

I mean that Jesse helms is the product of a time and place that thankfully the worst of which has mostly disappeared, but not everything he said and did was neccesarily tainted as a result of having lived in that time and place. He said and did some good and some bad things, and from our perspective one doesn't neccesarily cancel out the other......


I'm just saying, it's easy to sum up a person's life with a label, but the truth is much harder, and almost always more worthwhile.

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ORIGINAL: mapachito13

It's amazing to me that conservatives will fall all over themselves to be apologists for fellow conservatives while overlooking blatant flaws in the individual and then will turn around and demonize a George Carlin (liberal) for his.

I am going to use the same logic as I have seen others use:
[sarc/on] He's an unrepentant sinner so it proves he didn't accept Jesus in his heart so we can all be sure of where he's at and it's a place where the heat is always on. [sarc/off]

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ORIGINAL: JimboFletch

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ORIGINAL: mapachito13

It's amazing to me that conservatives will fall all over themselves to be apologists for fellow conservatives while overlooking blatant flaws in the individual and then will turn around and demonize a George Carlin (liberal) for his.

I am going to use the same logic as I have seen others use:
[sarc/on] He's an unrepentant sinner so it proves he didn't accept Jesus in his heart so we can all be sure of where he's at and it's a place where the heat is always on. [sarc/off]

An' we po ignernt relijous right-wingers are larnin' by yo 'xample, suh.

George Calin didn't deserve much back-slapping for denigrating my Lord and fellow believers all his life. But you are welcome to claim him as your bro if you want.

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ORIGINAL: mapachito13
And being racist is responding to Our Lord's call? "What you do to the least of these you do unto ME" IOW how we treat our fellow humans is proof of how we respond to Our Lord's call, isn't it? We can't say we love God and hate our brother at the same time.

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ORIGINAL: JimboFletch

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ORIGINAL: mapachito13
And being racist is responding to Our Lord's call? "What you do to the least of these you do unto ME" IOW how we treat our fellow humans is proof of how we respond to Our Lord's call, isn't it? We can't say we love God and hate our brother at the same time.

I agree, hating or belittling Jesse Helms is beneath you.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

That being said, the reality from the black perspective was the pace of change in the South was horribly insufficient, and his failure to comprehend that was probably his greatest failing.

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ORIGINAL: davemiller7

Having grown up in upstate NY in the 50s, I can attest to the fact that, although the North appeared to be an integrated society, the truth of the matter is that it was all on the surface. True, we had integrated schools, lunch counters, and restrooms, etc., but there was very little mixing of races socially. Interracial marriage was virtually unheard of and certainly frowned upon by most people. Whites hung with whites, blacks hung with blacks, and the only real interaction came in sports, and even then there was a lot of racial tension. So while the South may have been slow and incomplete, the North wasn't really much better, at least in NY.

-Dave

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

That being said, the reality from the black perspective was the pace of change in the South was horribly insufficient, and his failure to comprehend that was probably his greatest failing.

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ORIGINAL: landabee

As the OP: I have a few things to say.

1) Keep it Civil. I do not wish to have this thread degenerate into another name calling thread.

2) The topic is Mr. Helms.

Mr.


Helms.


3) Not Mr. Wright. Not Mr. Obama. Not Mr. Carlin.

4) Use this thread to discuss Mr. Helms' life, politics, public service and your views regarding him.


I am sick and tired of every single solitary thread in current events being controlled and usurped by malcontents with nothing better to do than bring every subject around to their pet peeves.

This is not a discussion of contemporary people in America that are liberal or conservative.

Again: if you can not be civil.......... perhaps this isn't the thread for you.

If the the thread withers and dies........... better than more of the vitriolic bickering.

One does not have to be disagreeable to disagree. Give it a try.

~landabee

quote:

My first encounter with Jesse Helms came in the Delta Sigma Phi fraternity room at Duke University in 1966. That was the site of the closest television to my room, and Jesse Helms came on every weekday evening for a live commentary on Raleigh station WRAL.

"Listen to this guy if you have any question about what a redneck area this is," advised my friends. When Jesse sought corroboration for his reactionary thoughts he called "Cousin Chub" Seawell into the studio. Seawell's folksiness was more entertaining than Helms' often bitter diatribes, but the message came out pretty much the same. We watched them assail everything we believed in.

Sometimes we laughed; sometimes we became infuriated. Always we looked down on them. We derided them as they derided us. Never did we take them seriously, except as examples of the narrow backwardness that summoned us to become liberal instruments of enlightenment.

I was a senior when Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968. Roughly 2,000 of us joined a vigil on the quad for several days. The vigil was an instrument of our grieving and a voice for racial justice on Duke's campus. Higher wages and union recognition for the non-academic employees—cooks, food-servers, maids, and janitors, most of whom were black—became the focal issue. We sat peacefully and largely silent day and night, studying for finals, listening to Dr. King's speeches and singing "We Shall Overcome" every hour. To this day I count it as a major event in my spiritual formation.

Jesse Helms came on the television and said that all of the students sitting on the quad at Duke should ask their parents if it would be all right for their son or daughter to "marry a Negro" (Duke students were practically all white in those days). Unless the student's parents approved of that prospect, Helms advised, he or she should go back to class. We all took the words as vindication for our cause.

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ORIGINAL: mapachito13

quote:

ORIGINAL: landabee

As the OP: I have a few things to say.

1) Keep it Civil. I do not wish to have this thread degenerate into another name calling thread.

2) The topic is Mr. Helms.

Mr.


Helms.


3) Not Mr. Wright. Not Mr. Obama. Not Mr. Carlin.

4) Use this thread to discuss Mr. Helms' life, politics, public service and your views regarding him.


I am sick and tired of every single solitary thread in current events being controlled and usurped by malcontents with nothing better to do than bring every subject around to their pet peeves.

This is not a discussion of contemporary people in America that are liberal or conservative.

Again: if you can not be civil.......... perhaps this isn't the thread for you.

If the the thread withers and dies........... better than more of the vitriolic bickering.

One does not have to be disagreeable to disagree. Give it a try.

~landabee

Boldface added to OP

I'll let your own words speak for themselves! I hope you can appreciate the irony!