# Death of an American hero -- Jesse Helms



## aquacorps (Jul 4, 2008)

It is only fitting that an American hero like Jesse Helms would pass away on the fourth of July. I plan on naming my next cross in his honor. Rusty


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## PaphMadMan (Jul 4, 2008)

aquacorps said:


> It is only fitting that an American hero like Jesse Helms would pass away on the fourth of July. I plan on naming my next cross in his honor. Rusty



I don't think this is the place for political discussion, but I have to make it clear that Mr. Helms was by no means a hero to all Americans. Personally, any cross named for him will be suited only for treatment with Round-Up, no matter how beautiful.


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## Rick Barry (Jul 4, 2008)

History buffs will no doubt note that co-founding fathers John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, fifty years to the day after that fateful event we celebrate. I wonder if they would have invited him over for barbeque and beers?

Rick


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## Heather (Jul 4, 2008)

First off, this should be in the non-orchid discussion forum so I have moved it. 

Second, for some reason, this is what most comes to my mind. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Jn8K8EA7-Q&feature=related

While this is not a political forum, we're all certainly able to express our opinions here and today, in my opinion, the world is a slightly better place.


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## PaphMadMan (Jul 4, 2008)

Heather said:


> First off, this should be in the non-orchid discussion forum so I have moved it.
> 
> Second, for some reason, this is what most comes to my mind.
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Jn8K8EA7-Q&feature=related
> ...



The Wicked Witch is Dead! :rollhappy: Heather, I think I just fell in love...


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## Heather (Jul 4, 2008)

Oh, go ahead and give it away then! oke:

Are you single?


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## Candace (Jul 4, 2008)

> History buffs will no doubt note that co-founding fathers John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on July 4, 1826,



I didn't know that.


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## PaphMadMan (Jul 4, 2008)

Heather said:


> Oh, go ahead and give it away then! oke:
> 
> Are you single?



Sorry to lead you on, babe. I usually go for um... more masculine types. :wink:


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## Heather (Jul 4, 2008)

PaphMadMan said:


> Sorry to lead you on, babe. I usually go for um... more masculine types. :wink:



Cool, friends are good; I'll take all the love I can get!


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## WolfDog1 (C. Williams) (Jul 4, 2008)

I cannot imagine that ANYONE who posts in this forum would consider Jesse Helms a hero of any kind at all. I hope the original post was meant in jest.

Craig


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## aquacorps (Jul 4, 2008)

“I would like to be remembered as a fella who did the best he could and didn't back down when he thought he was right. And if I've done anything ... made any contribution and I don't say that I have ... it is that I have introduced into the dialog some things that may not have been introduced otherwise.”

Jesse Helms


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## Heather (Jul 4, 2008)

We can certainly make this a quote war if you like...Maybe HE thought he was right? 

"Helms was an advocate of the tobacco industry since much of North Carolina's rural economy relies on tobacco. (Hubert Humphrey once said that, "I'll trade Jesse Helms his tobacco vote for my wheat support any day.") Tobacco companies such as R. J. Reynolds and Philip Morris have supported him, both directly and through donations to the Jesse Helms Center at Wingate University. Helms became chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee in the 1980s.
Helms opposed the Martin Luther King Day bill in 1983 on grounds that King had two associates with communist ties, Stanley Levison and Jack O'Dell. [5] Helms led the Senatorial opposition to the bill and voiced disapproval of King's alleged philandering.
Though a chairman of a major Senate committee, he regularly eschewed invitations to go on Sunday interview programs, claiming his constituents did not watch them. He also advised a young press aide not to write a letter to the New York Times after one of its editorials condemned Helms: again, since most of the constituency did not subscribe to the paper, there was no need for him to engage the paper in a dispute.
Helms had close ties to the rightist Salvadoran death squad leader Roberto D'Aubuisson and was considered a main sponsor of D'Aubuisson's political party, the Nationalist Republican Alliance.[6] When confronted with evidence that D'Aubuisson ran death squads that systematically murdered civilians, he replied that "[a]ll I know, is that D'Aubuisson is a free enterprise man and deeply religious."[7]"


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## aquacorps (Jul 4, 2008)

Heather, Are you saying is work with Bono to fight AIDS in Africa was wrong? 

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) - Bono and Jesse Helms?

Not only are they friends, but the Irish rocker and archconservative former North Carolina senator also share a common cause: fighting AIDS in Africa.

Before U2 opened to a raucous crowd of 17,000 at the city's new downtown arena, Bono had dinner with Helms.

"He (Bono) called us a couple of weeks ago and said he wanted to see his old friend the senator," said John Dodd, president of the Jesse Helms Center, who accompanied Helms and other family members to Monday's meeting.

Since they were introduced several years ago, the Republican Helms and Bono have become close allies in the fight against the AIDS epidemic in Africa.

Helms, who is 84 and suffers from a number of serious health problems, arrived backstage before the show and was joined by Bono for a casual meal. On the menu: grilled chicken, roast beef and salmon.

"It was nothing fancy," Dodd said. "They ate in the cafeteria with the roadies and the rest of the crew."

The two men talked for a few minutes about their work and what they have been able to accomplish and what still needs to be done, Dodd said.

Bono briefed the senator on DATA—or Debt, AIDS, Trade in Africa—a nonprofit organization he helped found in 2002 with other activists to increase awareness of the crises in Africa.

Did Helms stay for the concert?

"No, he didn't," Dodd said. "He has been to a U2 show before, but he was tired after traveling back from Raleigh earlier in the day."


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## Heather (Jul 4, 2008)

Are you saying his anti-gay(etc!) actions weren't? Also, that's an article out of Charlotte, NC, his home state. Can you say, "biased"?

http://www.beyondhomophobia.com/blog/2008/07/04/jesse-helms-if-you-want-to-call-me-a-bigot-fine/

"Fighting" AIDS, I believe, meant something different to him than it means to me. 

http://home.att.net/~jrhsc/helms.html

You will be wasting bandwidth trying to convince me he was an American "Hero", if you want to waste time and energy trying to convince others here, fine, but I'm done with this.


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## NYEric (Jul 4, 2008)

Helms may have been a hero to some just as Stalin and Hitler were.


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## kentuckiense (Jul 4, 2008)

Heather said:


> Are you saying his anti-gay(etc!) actions weren't? Also, that's an article out of Charlotte, NC, his home state. Can you say, "biased"?
> 
> http://www.beyondhomophobia.com/blog/2008/07/04/jesse-helms-if-you-want-to-call-me-a-bigot-fine/
> 
> ...



To me, it's pretty apparent that aquacorps was just joking around. "naming my next cross" etc.



> Helms once deeply offended a black colleague, Democratic Senator Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois, by singing part of "Dixie" on a Capitol elevator.
> 
> Soon after the Senate vote on the Confederate flag insignia, Sen. Jesse Helms (R.-N.C.) ran into Mosely-Braun in a Capitol elevator. Helms turned to his friend, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R.-Utah), and said, "Watch me make her cry. I'm going to make her cry. I'm going to sing 'Dixie' until she cries." He then proceeded to sing the song about "the good life" during slavery to Mosely-Braun (Gannett News Service, 1993-09-02; Time, 1993-08-16).


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## ohio-guy (Jul 4, 2008)

Perhaps Aquacorps was being sarcastic, but I don't read it that way, especially in light of his subsequent comments.
But even if he was, unfortunately there are those who will continue to feel Jesse Helms and his ilk are great Americans. 
The great thing about America is we let just about everyone have their say. And if you let someone talk long enough, you will see their true nature. As some of the quotes and links posted here demonstrate, Helms was a very bigoted man, who held poorly formed opinions.
I for one am glad to see him gone.


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## bench72 (Jul 4, 2008)

ok, so work with me here... I guess naming the hybrid with the bulbous sangii pouch, the forward projecting druryi dorsal and hmm, petals, petals... maybe the lovely argus petals could be a good plant to name after Mr Helms...



Heather said:


> Are you saying his anti-gay(etc!) actions weren't? Also, that's an article out of Charlotte, NC, his home state. Can you say, "biased"?
> 
> http://www.beyondhomophobia.com/blog/2008/07/04/jesse-helms-if-you-want-to-call-me-a-bigot-fine/
> 
> ...



these were truly disturbing...

however, I do question homoxual men being on television... the way they are turning hetroxual men into impeccably coiffured metroxuals... it is doing my head in... I mean how can Heather and I pick which ones bat for our team!!! oke:


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## PaphMadMan (Jul 4, 2008)

bench72 said:


> ok, so work with me here... I guess naming the hybrid with the bulbous sangii pouch, the forward projecting druryi dorsal and hmm, petals, petals... maybe the lovely argus petals could be a good plant to name after Mr Helms...



Perhaps a poisonous saphrophytic fungus, never an orchid...


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## SlipperFan (Jul 4, 2008)

Interesting discussion. Within the past couple of weeks, the USA has lost two insightful Americans who were tops in their field and pretty much respected by people on both sides of the political fence. Jesse Helms was not one of them.


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## paphlady (Jul 4, 2008)

NYEric said:


> Helms may have been a hero to some just as Stalin and Hitler were.



Or Ho Chi Minh, Castro, Saddam Hussein, Churchill, Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, Clinton, Bush, etc. No matter which side of the fence you're on, you'll find people on the other side.


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## Frederick (Jul 5, 2008)

*Such a nice man...*

I think the obituary in today's _Guardian _sums it up nicely : "it is hard even now to think of him with charity."
F.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/04/usa

"Senator Jesse Helms, member of the US Senate's foreign relations committee for two decades and its chairman from 1995 to 2001, has died at the age of 86. To echo this newspaper's memorable comment on the death of William Randolph Hearst, it is hard even now to think of him with charity. From his earliest years, Helms's attitudes recalled those of an earlier southern bigot, Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi, who so outraged his Senate colleagues, that they eventually refused even to let him take his seat.

There was never a comparable risk for Helms, who maintained an old-world courtesy in his personal contacts. But that was only on the surface. He became one of the most powerful and baleful influences on American foreign policy, repeatedly preventing his country paying its UN contributions, voting against virtually all arms control measures, opposing international aid programmes as "pouring money down foreign rat holes", and avidly supporting military juntas in Latin America and minority white regimes in Southern Africa.

In domestic politics he denounced the 1964 Civil Rights Act as "the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress", voted against a supreme court justice because she was "likely to uphold the homosexual agenda", acted for years as spokesman for the large tobacco companies, was reprimanded by the justice department and the federal election commission for electoral malpractice, and compiled a dismal personal record as a slum landlord.

The irony was that he was often seen as a relative moderate in his home state of North Carolina. His views sprang directly from his background as the son of the police chief in the small town of Monroe. Even before the Depression, life there was a constant struggle. It produced generations of deeply conservative poor whites, steeped in jingoistic patriotism and fundamentalist religion, who regarded the surrounding black population as barely part of the human race."


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## aquacorps (Jul 5, 2008)

It was a joke. I did meet him in the 80's while attending grad school in North Carolina. Nice enough guy, but I could not figure out why he kept getting elected till a friend's dad pointed out it was all about big tobacco. So from that perspective he served his state well. I can't wait to see the Colbert report. Rusty


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## cnycharles (Jul 5, 2008)

WolfDog1 (C. Williams) said:


> I cannot imagine that ANYONE who posts in this forum would consider Jesse Helms a hero of any kind at all. I hope the original post was meant in jest.
> 
> Craig



does that mean that this forum is only for generally liberal orchid growers?


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## likespaphs (Jul 5, 2008)

cnycharles said:


> does that mean that this forum is only for generally liberal orchid growers?





no, it's not. free speech, baby!


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## Heather (Jul 5, 2008)

Still I feel better knowing the original post was in jest.


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## cnycharles (Jul 5, 2008)

though I generally despise tobacco, (except for use in creating great insecticides or to be sold as flowering annuals), tobacco interests, tobacco companies, smoke etc. and all like that, if I were living in a state that had large employers that were tobacco companies then I would strongly hope that my elected officials were backing the legal industries involved. after all, that is why an elected official is elected, to protect and promote their regions' interest to the general assembly of other elected officials. now, a 'perfect' representative (that has never nor will ever exist) would recognize the danger and destructiveness of tobacco, and look long and hard for alternatives to the said industry and ways to ease the bad out and ease in the good, new industry. example is I think in virginia or one of the states where tobacco used to be grown, many farmers were now switching to other income producing crops. don't know if helms ever did the second part though it isn't 'required' of an official to do so. even though I am conservative (not republican; independent), there were very many parts of mr. helms' makeup that I found to be very disturbing. but then again what politician if looked at very closely won't fail under the public eye in some form or another?


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## SlipperFan (Jul 5, 2008)

cnycharles said:


> does that mean that this forum is only for generally liberal orchid growers?


I think we are all liberal orchid growers -- that's why we have so many.oke:


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## cnycharles (Jul 5, 2008)

SlipperFan said:


> I think we are all liberal orchid growers -- that's why we have so many.oke:



 ah, in that case the description for most of us here should be 'ultra left-wing orchid purchasers!' :wink:

(stage whisper) meaning 'buying tons of plants' with great avidity


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## SlipperFan (Jul 5, 2008)

:rollhappy:


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## rdhed (Jul 5, 2008)

No matter what your beliefs about Senator Helms were at least we can openly express them on this forum. I know another forum where you were censured or totally banned if you didn't believe as the administrator did. As it was said earlier "Thanks for freedom of speech" and "Thanks to Slippertalk for allowing open discussion." :clap::clap::clap::clap:


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## cnycharles (Jul 5, 2008)

cnycharles said:


> ah, in that case the description for most of us here should be 'ultra left-wing orchid purchasers!' :wink:
> 
> (stage whisper) meaning 'buying tons of plants' with great avidity



some of us are even die-hard party-liners in that they only buy paph species or besseae hybrids...


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## NYEric (Jul 6, 2008)

Damn commonists! :viking:


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## Heather (Jul 6, 2008)

This has been a really interesting thread. I love you guys. :smitten:
The thanks should really go to you all!


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## Heather (Jul 6, 2008)

Okay, I have a little more to say. 

This IS why the forum was started. It really is the heart of the matter, we may not always agree but we always seem to get along, no matter the matter at hand. 

And I like what Dot said.


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## Bolero (Jul 7, 2008)

Being from Australia I haven't heard of this guy at all. 

Me goes off to look up this guy and all he stood for.......;-)


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## Bolero (Jul 7, 2008)

Ok.........an interesting character.

I will leave my opinion now for another time. I love political discussions of course, I get excited by them!


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## NYEric (Jul 7, 2008)

Senator Helms has the distinction of behind the driving force behind having all references to homosexuality removed from government funded AIDS awareness educational literature. Promoting ignorance is therefore one of his great achievements.


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