Ding Dong, The Bitch Is Dead: Jesse Helms, Dead At 86

I am not one of these people that thinks that all deaths leave the world a poorer place. While I am against the death penalty, I am not above taking a little pleasure in the death of particularly vile people and today is no different. Sometimes I feel a little guilty about such pleasure taking, but not today. Today marks the death of someone who cause such misery in his life that his passing is cause for a massive exhale of relief.

Jesse Helmes was a dark-hearted bastard who was almost a caricature of the stereotypical pre-Civil Rights era Southerner. I say "almost" a caricature because he indeed was racist, homophobic, anti-art, Red-baiting, anti-choice...anti-everything all-purpose bigot. He led the fight against establishing Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a national holiday, blocked ratification of the Test Ban Treat and Kyoto Protocol (not to mention Salt II) and campaigned against womens rights, gay rights and overaLl civil rights for decades in the US Senate.

In recent years Helms was approached by Bono to help the singer in his quest to reduce 3rd world debt and the suffering it causes and like many older staunch conservatives, he worked to repair his image, becoming more "compassionate" in his dotage. Late life reversals not withstanding, the man was a vile human being and like the Reverend Jerry Falwell, the world is a better place without him.