One less bigot

I know I SHOULD be more compassionate and sympathetic. But I'm not.

Jesse Helms died yesterday.

He was the worst kind of ignorant, intolerant racist southern politician.

"He'll be remembered, in part, for the strong racist streak that articulated his politics and almost all of his political campaigns — they were racialized in the most negative ways," said Kerry Haynie, a political science professor at Duke University, who noted that unlike George Wallace and Strom Thurmond, Helms never repented for such tactics.

Helms, however, was an equal opportunity closed-minded intolerant SOB.

In 1993, when then-President Clinton sought confirmation for an openly homosexual assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Helms registered his disgust. "I'm not going to put a lesbian in a position like that," he said in a newspaper interview at the time. "If you want to call me a bigot, fine."

Charming fellow.

For someone like him to have died on July 4, the date of the Declaration of Independence, is really sad.

Nevertheless, there's one less racist in the world today.

See, you can find good in everything if you look.

And so it goes.