The recent passing of Senator Jesse Helms was not a sad occasion for me. During the Washington, D.C. phase of my career, I had more than one occasion to meet Helms and experience his famous rage.
Shortly after his death on July 4, I tried, without success, to convince editors of national newspapers to publish my manuscript about a particularly nasty encounter with Helms. The editors declined my work because they had a policy not to print negative things about the deceased. Silence has consequences.
The national media had several things to say about Helms. He got his greatest coverage in the July 5 weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal. Helms's photo was on the front page. On page A2, the Journal had a lengthy "Remembrance" article on the senator.
The Journal also carried an editorial that called Helms a "hero of the Cold War." John Fund, on the Journal's op-ed page, opined at length about Helms's conservative political values. In short, the Journal labeled Helms a near political saint. Well, Jesse was no saint.
The Journal's articles didn't bury Helms's harsh hate politics. "Helms was a conservative populist, and his campaigns were not above demagoguery," the Journal opined. Fund was more direct in his criticism. Helms's views "such as his blind spot on racial issues and mean-spirited comments against gays were troublesome," he wrote.
In Time magazine, Republican political strategist Charlie Black, who worked for Helms's 1972 senatorial campaign, made a bold statement about his old boss: He was essential to the end of the Cold War. Black writes "As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he [Helms] was there every step of the way as Reagan worked to end the [C]old [W]ar." It's an astonishing and inaccurate claim.
Helms chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1995 to 2001. Reagan, of course, left office in 1989. During the 1980s, Helms chaired the Senate Agriculture Committee and steered as many federal dollars as he could to his North Carolina tobacco growers. Helms, also in the 1980s, declared all out war against the LGBT community. He discovered dollars in demonizing us.
As a gay man and a Republican, I find the media adoration and praise of Jesse Helms difficult to take. Further, Time 's editors are guilty of malpractice for allowing Black to glorify Helms in its pages. Where were Time 's fact checkers? I cried foul to Time the only way I knew how: A letter to the editor.
Perhaps Time's letters editor will also ignore my effort to correct Black's statement about Helms. This raises an important question: When, if ever, will there be a time and place to label Jesse Helms as the racist homophobe he was?
If it was against media policy to print negative things about the deceased, when will the right time arrive? Can editors print a column about Jesse's hate politics six months or a year after his death? When will such a time come and how will readers know about it?
Jesse Helms prided himself on being politically incorrect. He once whistled "Dixie" in a senate elevator with African American Senator Carol Moseley Braun (D-Illinois). He later told the press he wanted to upset her. He upset more people than Ms. Braun when the story appeared in the press. Yet, Helms didn't care. If Helms didn't care about the hateful things he said, why should editors and journalists protect Helms from the same tactics he used for 30 years in the Senate? They shouldn't.
When Helms attacked me for managing a diversity program for LGBT federal employees, he called me a "pervert" and a "criminal." As a result I got death threats for months after the untruthful rant. Helms lied about me and I was faced with fighting the ugly charges. My battle went on for years and eventually curtailed my job as a Foreign Service officer with the government.
Words have consequences. Helms knew he could throw hateful words at people like me and he'd get great press and financial contributions from it. Editors and journalists also know words have consequences but silence to call Helms the racist homophobe he really was also has consequences.
Jim Patterson is an economist, shareholder activist, and freelance journalist. He can be reached at (415) 516-3493.