Now that it appears this man is going to retire, I’m afraid we’re going to get a bunch of creepy encomiums to the old bigot. Yes, I have no doubt in my mind that, in Helms’ case, that over-used word is not a smidgen too harsh. His nasty racial politics might have helped the GOP gain ascendancy for a while in the South, but it tarred Republicans for a long, long time with the stench of racism – and deservedly so. If you want to know why our politics is so racially polarized, and why Republicans still can’t get much more than ten percent of the black vote, then take a look at the career of Jesse Helms. Yes, contemporary black leadership has a large share of the blame as well. But how can you blame many African-Americans for their suspicion of Republicans when an old segregationist like Helms still held sway in the party? The way in which he routinely held up all sorts of legislation, executive appointments, and on and on, in pursuit of his own idiosyncratic and often barmy crusades also came back to haunt his party as Democrats learned obstructionism from the master. His pioneering of direct-mail campaigning poisoned politics even further, polarizing our discourse by inflammatory rhetoric. And his aloofness from open debate showed a contempt for the democratic process. See David Plotz’s excellent summary of the old man’s legacy, recycled in the current Slate, for details. Helms’s hatred of gay people was particularly acute. He never missed an opportunity to demonize them, spread vicious lies about them, de-humanize their relationships, and undermine their civil rights and human dignity. Yes, he occasionally stood up for the right thing – in his crusade against Communism and his skepticism of the United Nations. But whatever good he did, and however ‘courtly’ he was, he left this country and the world with more poison in its bloodstream than before. That is his legacy and it is almost all despicable. It is too much to hope that he would use his retirement to reflect a little on the pain he has caused and the division he has sown. But it is not too much to feel more than a little relief that this man will soon be gone.
LETTERS: A fattie writes back; straight unsafe sex; couch potatoes; etc.
THAT SYPHILIS SURGE AGAIN: Those of you who think I’m wacko to be skeptical of the Centers for Disease Control should take a look at the recent statements of one Dr. Jim Buehler, associate director of science at the CDC’s Center for HIV, STD & TB Prevention. In the August 2 issue of Southern Voice, the best gay paper in the country, Buehler is quoted as saying the following: “Syphilis is coming back in the U.S. … There’s been an increase, especially in urban areas, particularly among men who have sex with men.” Today’s CDC press release on syphilis shows, according to the Associated Press, that “the reported rate of syphilis is at the lowest level since reporting began in 1941. The CDC says the unprecedented low rate of syphilis overall has created a “unique but narrow window of opportunity” for eliminating the disease in the United States.” So which is it? Is syphilis resurgent or at an historic low? The dogged AIDS trouble-maker, Michael Petrelis, found that in one city, New York, there was indeed a big jump in syphilis over the past year – but to a grand total of 155. Indianapolis seems to have had an outbreak, but in a prison population. There was a study in Seattle which also claimed such an increase among men who have sex with men, but the outbreak was restricted to a small pool of the same clients of a particular bath-house. So where’s the evidence that “syphilis is coming back in the U.S.”? It’s down by over 22 percent since 1997! You’d think Buehler would know. He’s an expert in “HIV, STC and TB Prevention.” It seems to me that his statement is one of the most incompetent from a public official I’ve ever heard. It flies in the face of his own agency’s statistics, available to anyone who wants to check them. Shouldn’t such a person simply resign for such inaccuracy? Or is there some secret log of syphilis statistics that only he has access to?
The Dish 