Jesse Helms Was a Racist, Homophobic Piece of Shit. And Now He's Dead.

Leave it to Dan Savage to speak the truth at a time of "decorum". Savage includes choice quotes from Aravosis which depict exactly what kind of politicians Helms was. Here's one he didn't highlight:

And the man ABC News now describes as a "conservative icon" (8/22/01) in 1993 sang "Dixie" in an elevator to Carol Moseley-Braun, the first African-American woman elected to the Senate, bragging, "I'm going to make her cry. I'm going to sing Dixie until she cries." (Chicago Sun-Times, 8/5/93)

Lovely. Yglesias gets it right:

I've never been 100 percent clear on why you're not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but suffice it to say that while there were many more vile politicians in the world than the now-dead Jesse Helms they were pretty much all brutal dictators and the like.