And May He Rest in Peace Amongst Many Gays, Blacks, & Foreigners

When I read on Saturday that Jesse Helms had died, my first reaction was, He was still alive? I must have gotten him mixed up with Strom Thurmond or some other long-irrelevant, recently-buried asshole.

After seeing the headline, my second reaction was this:

I knew Helms was notorious for his staunch conservatism, but I didn’t know a whole lot more than that. Most of us, including yours truly, have very little sense of how policy is actually made in Washington. We judge our legislators from the sidelines, and usually from the cheap seats. We go by what we see in the news: the small minority of bills that make headlines, the sound bites Jon Stewart pulls and then mocks. We hear that some Republican senator from Oklahoma has sponsored a bill approving more oil-drilling in Alaska and we think, Fuckin’ Republicans -- they’re all earth-wrecking pricks.

In reality, of course, it’s much more complicated than that. Having read "inside the Beltway" books like Washington, by Meg Greenfield, I've gradually taken on a more measured stance. A lot goes on behind the scenes, and most of it is not sophomoric bickering. When Politicians from opposing parties claim they are friends who just happen to "respectfully disagree" on many issues, my impression is that, more often than not, they are telling the truth, even in this era of bitter partisan politics.

Put aside the fact that they’re more ambitious -- and, eventually, more corrupt -- than the rest of us, and politicians are just like everyone else. That is to say, they are multidimensional, complex, flawed but generally well-meaning people. Check out former targets-of-Democratic-scorn in less malevolent settings -- Bob Dole on Letterman, Newt Gingrich with Ali G -- and you'll see on display the qualities that got them elected in the first place . Even Robert McNamara comes off reasonably well -- not as a hawkish ideologue, but as a reflective intellectual with his heart (yes, heart) in the right place -- in Errol Morris's phenomenal documentary Fog of War.

It follows, then, that maybe there was more to Jesse Helms after all. Maybe he was reflective. Maybe he had a heart.

Maybe not. I read his obituary in the Times, and here was my third reaction:

What a dickhead.

I could be compassionate and liberal-minded and say that nothing is ever so simple. Nothing is black and white. But "black-and-white" pretty much sums up Helms’s own limited thinking (in more ways than one), so why not apply those same standards to him now? Ultimately the guy was a backwards-thinking, intolerant bigot, and that is how he should be remembered. I read about his career and was reminded of everything Helms stood for and fought for, and I was able to put aside my humanism and drop the benefit of the doubt I had briefly given him.

America would be better off without people like him, and so will the afterlife -- wherever his happens to be.

And in other news, equally worthy of the Times:

"Pringles, Never a Chip, Found to Be No Potato Snack, Either."