Jesse Helms, Your Sheets Are Ready...

Jesse Helms has written his memoirs, and he's just as much a bigoted old bastard as he was when he was in the Senate.

Helms, 83, was one of the state's leading voices of segregation as a TV commentator in Raleigh in the 1960s and opposed nearly every civil rights bill while in the Senate. He has never retracted his views on race or said segregation was wrong.

In the book, Helms suggests he believed voluntary racial integration would come about without pressure from the federal government or from civil rights protests that he said sharpened racial antagonisms.

"We will never know how integration might have been achieved in neighborhoods across our land, because the opportunity was snatched away by outside agitators who had their own agendas to advance," according to the uncorrected proof. "We certainly do know the price paid by the stirring of hatred, the encouragement of violence, the suspicion and distrust." [Emphasis added by MB]

I wasn't sure I wanted to waste precious pixels on him, but that last line was just too much. Jesse, who do you think was doing the stirring of hatred and the encouragement of violence, the suspicion and distrust? Let me give you a hint: it was sheet-wearing cross-burning bungholes like you, you miserable excuse for a human being.

Feh.