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Jesse Helms Passes Away at Age 86

M

Matt

First, the story...

[url]http://www.wral.com/news/local/politics/story/1755723/ [/url]

Some of us remember that for the 12 years prior to his long career in the US Senate, Helms was the editorial spokesman for WRAL-TV/FM/North Carolina News Network. He also had some ownership interest in the company.

Some of us will always hate him and say "...good riddance...". Others will mourn his passing with fond remembrance. Either way, we have lost a North Carolina original.

Later....
Matt Smith
WGSR-TV
 
WPTF did a bang up job with this story especially with most other stations on auto-pilot for the holiday. I don't listen often and have to admit I tuned in preparing for them to blow it. But it was good radio yesterday.
 
Thanks for moving the posts - they had no part about Radio / TV in the Raleigh market.

I only wish that some of the WRAL Editorials could be posted on the Internet. I had always heard about the DOME for Chapel Hill (not the Dean Dome); but a city-sized dome to completely cover the city and campus at Chapel Hill. I never knew if it was an urban legend or fact.
 
There's a piece of one of them in WRAL-TV's video presentation on the story.

Later....
Matt Smith
WGSR-TV
 
This should really go under Charlotte/Asheville, but I wrote Mr. Helms on at least two subjects on which he agreed with me. One was the road to allow those displaced by Fontana Dam to access their former homeplaces. The tree-huggers have blocked that one now that Charles Taylor is no longer going to bat for that.

The other was the treatment of Zeb Lee, who lost his radio station WZLS after it was discovered a procedural error was made when they granted him the station. Mr. Helms called it "beyond the pale."
 
Brad & Britt certainly were less than kind to the late Senator on their show this morning. Brad Krantz seemed to be even more bitter than usual.
 
Brad probably in a funk because he never got to interview Jesse, and probably never will - unless they do one of those "cut and paste" interviews. Helms didn't do interviews with those who opposed him. He correctly believed that he was not going to change their minds, so why waste his time.

The WRAL obit piece was nice; but it would be great to see the ViewPoint editorials as they were broadcast. You can see how people change over time.
 
DubbaDon said:
Brad probably in a funk because he never got to interview Jesse, and probably never will - unless they do one of those "cut and paste" interviews. Helms didn't do interviews with those who opposed him. He correctly believed that he was not going to change their minds, so why waste his time.

The WRAL obit piece was nice; but it would be great to see the ViewPoint editorials as they were broadcast. You can see how people change over time.
Click to expand...

Well, certainly Jesse never changed---he remained the same obstructionist racist, and was proud of it. I believe WRAL-TV has spent the last thirty years trying to live down Jesse's notorious time there. It is doubtful the station would air any of his old "Viewpoint" segments, even on the occasion of his passing. If WRAL is smart (and I believe they are) those tapes were destroyed years ago. For those who were not around to hear/see them firsthand, his editorials really were quite shameful and disturbing.
 
fortmill said:
It is doubtful the station would air any of his old "Viewpoint" segments, even on the occasion of his passing. If WRAL is smart (and I believe they are) those tapes were destroyed years ago. For those who were not around to hear/see them firsthand, his editorials really were quite shameful and disturbing.
Click to expand...
I guess, especially if they were "smart" and destroyed the tapes (if there were any), that way we'd have to trust second-hand accounts 40 years after the fact of how the "Viewpoints" were.
I don't know man, I'd rather be able to check them out and see for myself and take into account the context of the 1950s-1980s instead of just viewing it all through the prism of time, like every Jesse Helms detractor seems to do....unless for some reason I wasn't qualified to be trusted to make my own decision on the matter, and should just depend on others' remembrances....
 
You can not learn from history if you ignore it or destroy it.

In Greensboro at War Memorial Stadium, the list of the WWI Dead are on two columns in alphabetical order. Except the list, starts over with "A" on the second column after a space. A friend of mine (who is Black) told me that pressure in the 70's had the word "Negroes" removed from the marker. Now there is a movement to restore the marker to its original condition, so that folks will realize that things were different and have improved.

How can we understand something that we have not experienced? Think of all the art destroyed over the years because of intolerance.

Without proof, accusations about an individual become pointless. Hearsay evidence doesn't count. It's one of the reasons that many groups have banded together to save recordings of history - both from commercial sources and personal recordings.
 
At the risk of offending some possible "die-hard" Helms fans, hehe, I'll just say that his passing on July 4 was probably the best news I heard all day! ;D Normally, I wouldn't rejoice over the death of another human being...but there are some exceptions aren't there? Helms was an intolerant bigot and though I'm white, it's hidebound, narrow-minded jackarses as Helms that sometimes almost make me ashamed to admit I'm Caucasian (depending on what company I may be around at a given time). Okay, maybe I shouldn't just "go with the flow" and say that Helms was a bigot, unless I can back it up with point-blank evidence, but I sure seemed to hear/read a lot of things about him that appear to point to said bigotry on his part. I even had a former history teacher of mine, very pro-Helms, tell me about the time Helms sang "Dixie" in an elevator, much to the chagrin of then-Illinois black female senator Carol Moseley-Braun. From what I heard/read about this incident, it seemed that he was taunting her and even tried to make her cry. (And I'm no fan of Carol's, either, but that's irrelevant here.) What a lack of maturity and class from someone who was supposed to "represent" the diverse people of this state..no? Wonder why he kept winning re-election seemingly ad infinitum, over 30 years? Hmmm... :eek:

I'm not exactly a liberal Democrat typing this; heck, I'm probably more "cornservative" than many of my friends and acquaintances. (Except my history professor, LOL, who is a staunch Republican, indeed an anomaly in the world of higher academia) However, I just didn't particularly care for a man who likely lived a life of bigotry and intolerance for other people that didn't fit with his views of "the Old South." This really doesn't need to be a liberal or conservative thing, but a humanity thing...why can't we all just try to get along? ???


Lastly, I'll just close by saying that I may not have cared for Helms but if nothing else...at least you knew exactly where he stood, good or bad. That's something that many other a politician seems to have much trouble with!
 
raedizzle2008 said:
At the risk of offending some possible "die-hard" Helms fans, hehe, I'll just say that his passing on July 4 was probably the best news I heard all day! ;D Normally, I wouldn't rejoice over the death of another human being...but there are some exceptions aren't there? Helms was an intolerant bigot and though I'm white, it's hidebound, narrow-minded jackarses as Helms that sometimes almost make me ashamed to admit I'm Caucasian (depending on what company I may be around at a given time). Okay, maybe I shouldn't just "go with the flow" and say that Helms was a bigot, unless I can back it up with point-blank evidence, but I sure seemed to hear/read a lot of things about him that appear to point to said bigotry on his part. I even had a former history teacher of mine, very pro-Helms, tell me about the time Helms sang "Dixie" in an elevator, much to the chagrin of then-Illinois black female senator Carol Moseley-Braun. From what I heard/read about this incident, it seemed that he was taunting her and even tried to make her cry. (And I'm no fan of Carol's, either, but that's irrelevant here.) What a lack of maturity and class from someone who was supposed to "represent" the diverse people of this state..no? Wonder why he kept winning re-election seemingly ad infinitum, over 30 years? Hmmm... :eek:

I'm not exactly a liberal Democrat typing this; heck, I'm probably more "cornservative" than many of my friends and acquaintances. (Except my history professor, LOL, who is a staunch Republican, indeed an anomaly in the world of higher academia) However, I just didn't particularly care for a man who likely lived a life of bigotry and intolerance for other people that didn't fit with his views of "the Old South." This really doesn't need to be a liberal or conservative thing, but a humanity thing...why can't we all just try to get along? ???


Lastly, I'll just close by saying that I may not have cared for Helms but if nothing else...at least you knew exactly where he stood, good or bad. That's something that many other a politician seems to have much trouble with!
Click to expand...
This post couldn't really offend anyone. You're just "going with the flow."
It contains and says nothing but your second-hand, half-formed semi-opinions. You're allowed to have them.
Don't assume people will villify you for expressing your semi-opinions, no matter how ham-handedly you go about it.

You're criticizing a dead man for what you have heard from others were "likely" his opinions and assuming you know "his views of 'the Old South'" and why he voted for or against things (no, couldn't be any reason other than he's a bigot). But it's not all right for Helms to poke fun at a live woman Senator who can respond, because that shows "lack of class and immaturity." Do you really think she is so weak that Helms was trying to reduce her to tears in an elevator? Either you give her too little credit, or Helms too much credit, in your hindsight.

Good luck at filling and rounding those opinions out in the future, hope you get all the classes you signed up for this fall. Don't go through college being ashamed of being Caucasian, though. It's a waste of your talents.
 
:mad: Jesse Helms was one of the "Best Things that every happened to North Carolina" Howard Coble is the other....even if he is my cousin!
 
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