And in Other News, Hell is Now Segregated

(h/t to S., whose quick wit provided this title)

I know it's supposed to be wrong to speak ill of the dead, but fuck it. If you don't want people to dance on your grave when you pass, then don't be such a raging evil hatemonger while you're alive.

I love America just a little bit more this Independence Day because I learned today that Jesse Helms has left the proverbial building. Good riddance, I say. That racist, homophobic, contra-supporting, Castro-hating, hawkish bastard was the Senator from my home state for thirty years, nearly my entire life. 

He planted the seeds of my lifelong embarrassment of being born a Southerner and my future liberalism. The first vote I ever cast was against him. The thought of that bigot being unseated by a black man (Harvey Gantt, who mounted strong, if ultimately unsuccessful challenges against Helms in 1990 and 1996) was something I knew I wanted to be a part of. By the way, that was the election in which Helms (in)famously ran a campaign ad depicting a white fist crumbling up a job application over the words, ''You needed that job ... but they had to give it to a minority.'' Classy.

So excuse me if I don't shed any tears for the man. So long, "Senator No." See you in hell.