RIP

Maybe it is somehow fitting that in the year where America has come its closest to electing a black man as our leader, and will, I hope, actually do so this November, that Jesse Helms must pass from this world.

Helms spent his 86 years on this earth doing mostly things that I didn't agree with. My first two memories of the man centered around anger and embarrassment. Anger that I didn't turn eighteen in time to vote against him in his 1990 re-election bid and embarrassment that when I went to Europe in the summer of the same year people might associate me with the man if I told them what state I was from.

Helms was racist, bigoted, backward and best forgotten. I just hope that as his kind passes from this earth we can come together in a better place with more tolerance for all kinds of people.