Obits for opposites
By
Saul Landau
In
1977, James Abourezk (D-SD) had just returned from Cuba. He and his
fellow South Dakota Solon, George McGovern, had sought to use
basketball diplomacy. 
The University of South Dakota’s team played
Cuba’s national team. President Carter had supported the effort
since it coincided with his own initiative to gradually restore
relations with Cuba. Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) tried to stop this
process.
On
the Senate floor, beside the presiding officer’s desk, Abourezk
beseeched Helms to lighten up. “You ought go and see for yourself
what’s going on down there,” Abourezk said.
“You
oughta go to Chile and see what’s going on down there,” Helms
replied. His reference reminded Abourezk of a conversation he’d had
recently with Helms’ soul mate, Senator James Eastland (R-MS).
“I
told Pinochet he oughta hang all the Communists and put the
socialists in jail,” …
By
Saul Landau Read Spanish Version
In
1977, James Abourezk (D-SD) had just returned from Cuba. He and his
fellow South Dakota Solon, George McGovern, had sought to use
basketball diplomacy. The University of South Dakota’s team played
Cuba’s national team. President Carter had supported the effort
since it coincided with his own initiative to gradually restore
relations with Cuba. Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) tried to stop this
process.
On
the Senate floor, beside the presiding officer’s desk, Abourezk
beseeched Helms to lighten up. “You ought go and see for yourself
what’s going on down there,” Abourezk said.
“You
oughta go to Chile and see what’s going on down there,” Helms
replied. His reference reminded Abourezk of a conversation he’d had
recently with Helms’ soul mate, Senator James Eastland (R-MS).
“I
told Pinochet he oughta hang all the Communists and put the
socialists in jail,” Eastland smirked. “And Pinochet told me
‘that’s exactly what I’m doing.’”
“Helms
was a mean son of a bitch,” Abourezk offered as his obituary
comment. “The Senate was a lot more collegial before he arrived.”
Helms
was the quintessential Cold War, bible-thumping Senator and his
conversation with Abourezk was so Twentieth Century. In case anyone
failed to grasp his sentiment on Cuba, in the mid 1990s Helms
sponsored the Helms-Burton Bill tightening and codifying the embargo.
“Let me be clear,” Helms pronounced. “Whether Castro leaves
Cuba in a vertical or horizontal position is up to him and the Cuban
people. But he must — and will — leave Cuba.”
Helms
assumed horizontal posture before Castro, who remains in Cuba. But
Helms’ decades of public and private utterances did demonstrate
George Carlin’s insight: “Bullshit is the glue that binds this
nation.”
Carlin
(71) and Helms (86) — polar opposites of U.S. culture — died within
weeks of each other. Carlin taught critical thinking through stand-up
comedy. Helms represented unquestioned authority — of the past. Lest
anyone think Helms was always dour and serious about his love for all
things reactionary, those who knew him told stories of his inventive
sense of humor. This included the “good old boys” sense of humor.
In
1993, shortly after he made an impassioned speech about the virtues
of flying the Confederate flag, Helms shared the Senate elevator with
then Senator Carol Moseley Braun (D-IL) and his buddy and still
Senator, Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah).
“Watch
me make her cry. I’m going to make her cry,” he chortled to the
ever agreeable — to reaction — Hatch. “I’m going to sing Dixie
until she cries.” He then sang it. Moseley Braun retorted, “Just
the sound of you singing is enough to make me cry.” (Time, 8/16/93)
Helms
built his right wing reputation on combining hatred for communism
with contempt for integration. In 1983, Helms attacked the bill
establishing Martin
Luther King Day.
King, he charged, had close communist advisers (he actually named two
of them) and he was well known for his promiscuity.
The
die hard Dixiecrats understood Helms’ illusions and had not
forgotten that twenty years before during the early civil rights
protests, Helms, then a radio and TV commentator, had declared that
“The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that’s
thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and
interfere with other men’s rights.” (WRAL-TV
commentary, 1963)
Helms’
combined his pet hates into another “joke,” by referring to the
reputedly liberal University of North Carolina (UNC) as the
“University of Negroes and Communists.” (Charleston
Gazette,
9/15/95)
He
included the Hispanic population in his colored-based aesthetics.
“All Latins
are volatile people,” Helms declared on a less than totally
friendly visit to Mexico in 1986. “Hence, I was not surprised at
the volatile reaction.”
Helms
combined acidity for people of less than white hue and those of the
liberal persuasion with a sense of nostalgia for the banalities of
his youth. In a 1956 newspaper column he wrote: “I shall always
remember the shady streets, the quiet Sundays, the cotton wagons, the
Fourth of July parades, the New Year’s Eve firecrackers. I shall
never forget the stream of school kids marching uptown to place
flowers on the Courthouse Square monument on Confederate Memorial
Day.”
Helms,
a close ally of right wing Christian preachers, accused gays and
lesbians for causing “the proliferation of AIDS.” He sneered that
“there’s nothing gay about them.” In 1993, Clinton appointed
Roberta
Achtenberg
Assistant Secretary for
Housing
and Urban Development
(HUD). Helms called her unqualified and tried to block her
confirmation “because she’s a damn lesbian.”
Why
did he get so vitriolic? Was Helms, like so many of his political
ilk, really a closet queen? In 1974, a Helms staffer ushered me past
some blue haired ladies into a room full of aides, a couple of them
straight and others down-right flamers. Imagine my surprise when
Helms claimed that the “New
York Times
and The
Washington Post
are both infested with homosexuals. Just about every person down
there is a homosexual or lesbian.”
As
part of his anti-gay, anti-black and all other colors, anti-liberal
and pro gun credo, Helms also belonged to the “Proud to be an
American” club, the association of people whose bumpers bear the
sticker: “Proud To Be an American.”
I
never shared that sentiment; nor pride in being Jewish or coming from
New York. George Carlin analyzed such statements of pride as
bullshit. “Pride should be reserved for your achievements, not
accidents of birth like being American or Irish or Italian.”
God
Bless America, repeated Helms and thousands of other politicians. “Is
that a request, a demand a suggestion,” asked Carlin? “Imagine,
God singles out one country for his blessings because — well you go
figure.”
Carlin
mocked the religious pap that Helms and the vast Christian
fundamentalist right wing accept as God given. “Religion even
requires people to swear on the Bible when they testify in court,”
explained Carlin. “Why should swearing to God on the Bible mean
you’re telling the truth? As kids, every time we wanted to disguise
a whopping lie, we’d say ‘I swear on the Bible’ or I swear on
my mother’s tits.’ Swearing on the Bible never induced a cop to
tell the truth on the witness stand. They lie routinely when they
take the stand just to insure a conviction. The Bible is America’s
favorite theatrical prop.”
Indeed,
Carlin questioned everything, analyzed words, and splintered customs
with knife-like logic. “You go to a baseball, football or
basketball game and they begin with the Star Spangled banner. And all
the men — not the women — have to remove their hats. What’s the
relationship between a hat and patriotism? Why not take off your
pants to show you love this country?”
Helms
would have thrown Carlin in jail for using “dirty words.”
How can
a word be dirty, asked the late Lenny Bruce? “You take a word and
rub dirt on it?” Carlin enjoyed playing with words and phrases that
you can’t say on television. “You can prick your finger, but your
can’t finger your…”
For
Helms, such language insulted God. For Carlin, “using God is the
last refuge of a man who has no argument. If God was looking out for
us he would make sure all of us had food and houses. As a kid I was
taught that disobeying God would mean I’d burn in the hottest of
Hell, endure the most horrible pain. God routinely punished us by
causing tornadoes, hurricanes and such. He gave the disobedient
cancer and other hideous ailments. But don’t worry. God loves you.”
And
for the gun and God loving, Carlin’s question had particular
significance. “If God was looking out for you would He have given
you a gun to kill your girl friend?”
I
know Carlin isn’t in Heaven looking down and smiling at those who
remember him fondly. If there was such a place “up there,” he
would have better things to do. Unfortunately, Jesse probably isn’t
“down there” either.
But
imagine the Devil giving the important Jesse three choices. One
option he offers would be to join Reagan swimming in boiling water,
but not able to reach the shore. Helms refuses. Next, he sees Nixon
breaking an interminable pile of rocks. Nope!
For
his third option, the Devil opens a door and Helms sees Clinton
seated, facing him with Monica on her knees in front of the former
President and — well, doing her thing. The pious Helms grimaces, but
finally chooses this as the least horrible option. The Devil then
says: “Okay, Monica, you can go now.”
Saul
Landau once wrote plays for the San Francisco Mime Troupe.
