Bush Loves Bigots

He keeps nominating them: Two things are amazing here - both the fact that our media keep treating Jesse Helms as that cuddly uncle for all these years and that they've forgotten all of this (or failed to do a Lexis search).

From :Samizdat

In the October 19, 1984 New York Times, Allen was reported to have charged Hunt with the unpardonable crime of having links with "the queers." Allen was reported to have apologized shortly thereafter, but that apology - its text being unavailable - seems terribly insincere in light of a later Times piece:

Mr. Allen said he made the remark after the Hunt campaign ran television commercials saying Mr. Helms was supported by ''right-wing nuts,'' as Mr. Allen put it.

Asked yesterday about his remark, he explained, "I said at the time that we could say the same thing about queer groups" supporting Mr. Hunt.

Those words were recorded March 12, 1985. Sensitivity training is a many-life-long process, it seems.

The media seems largely to have forgotten about Mr. Allen's animus toward the "queers" exercise of their right to support whomever they want. The last article I found mentioning it was a November 18, 194 Washinton Post item on Uncle Jesse's 1984 campaign. The relevant passages:

Helms shamelessly mined the race issue. He called Hunt a "racist" for appealing to black votes on the basis of his support of civil rights measures. His press secretary Claude Allen, a black, tried to link Hunt with "queers." Allen later apologized.

But Helms didn't waver. On election eve, he accused Hunt of being supported by "homosexuals, the labor-union bosses and the crooks" and said he feared a large "bloc vote." What did he mean? "The black vote," Helms said.