Chris Kromm says the Jesse Helms obituaries missed the point.
In a lengthy post on the Facing South blog, the executive director of the Institute for Southern Studies said the mainstream media "down-played, ignored or even denied Helms' prejudices."
"To say Sen. Helms held deep prejudices against many — especially African-Americans and gays and lesbians — isn't a matter of opinion; it's all part of the historical record," he writes.
He attacks the idea that Helms was a "straight talker."
"Helms the strategic politician ... knew that by cultivating a straight-talk persona he could shift attention from the regressive content of what he was saying to a defense of his right to 'speak his mind' — but his fans and voters got the real message," he writes.
And he says Helms was not an "iconoclast."
"Helms' antics and positions did on many occasions put him at the far-right extremes of political debate. But he was by no means a marginal, fringe politician, and such a portrayal ignores Helms' ongoing popularity and his central role in U.S. politics for three decades," he writes.
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