The family and friends of the late Sen. Jesse Helms filled a Baptist church in Raleigh yesterday, but The Washington Post didn't radiate warmth toward the departed conservative leader. They wanted to highlight that his legacy was an ugly thing. Reporters Sylvia Adcock and Paul Kane noted Democrats did not speak at the service:
Those who did generally skirted Helms's often-divisive politics, instead focusing on him as a patriot, kindhearted boss and doting grandfather....
But while mourners in North Carolina paid tribute to the conservative icon, many lawmakers on Capitol Hill grappled with Helms's legacy -- often racially charged and geared toward a hard-edged patriotism that some felt bordered on xenophobia.
"He was a symbol of a part of our past, so maybe we're turning a page here," said Rep. Melvin Watt (D-N.C.), who managed the 1990 Senate campaign of a black Democrat, former Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt. In a tight race with Gantt, Helms launched an ad campaign in the final days that showed a pair of white hands opening a job rejection letter as a narrator said the job went to "a minority" because of affirmative action programs.
The Post ignored that Mel Watt sits in Congress due to court-mandated racially "charged" redistricting, an "affirmative action" program of a Congressional kind. As of the last census and redistricting, according to the Almanac of American Politics, Watt's district is 44.6 percent black, 44.6 percent white.
They also ignored that after the 1990 race was over, liberal reporters like ABC's Jim Wooten tried to claim a few months larter that Helms won despite the "fact" that "his black opponent was as anti-quota as he." Well, that would certainly put the Helms legacy in a different light.
The headline for the story was "Jesse Helms Recalled as Waging the 'Good Fight'" -- please note the quote marks, since the Post thinks the conservative side fights the Bad Fight. The subheadline was "Lawmakers Reflect On Divisive Legacy." Adcock and Kane made a beeline for Democrats to pay their disrespects to Helms:
Helms was often grouped with Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), the former segregationist who along with Helms retired in 2002. But Thurmond repudiated his decades of effort at blocking civil rights legislation and controversial statements about African Americans, an open recanting that Helms did not do.
"Different guys," said Biden, who was Thurmond's eulogist in 2003. "Jesse was harder-edged and took a lot longer to come around. And I'm not sure how much he came around on race."
The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto offered a different take on that liberal conventional wisdom here.
