THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 27, 1994 TAG: 9411270053
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVEN GREENHOUSE, THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long : 129 lines
Sen. Jesse Helms burst onto the public scene in 1960 as a hard-hitting, hard-right television commentator, and his recent verbal thunderbolts show that he has changed little.
The North Carolina Republican's attacks last week on President Clinton were hardly more vitriolic than those he has made on other favorite targets: homosexuals, Communists, Martin Luther King, bureaucrats, diplomats and leftists in Congress.
While slashing his foes during his 21 years in the Senate, Helms has also used his rhetoric to champion values he holds dear.
The senator, 73, will no doubt get more attention now that he is in line to become chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. He is already off to a Helmsian, if not a diplomatic, start.
First, he said that President Clinton is not up to the job of commander in chief; then he said the president is so unpopular that he ``better have a bodyguard'' if he visits North Carolina.
Helms aides say he plans to tone down his rhetoric, but judging from a sampling from the past that won't be easy. Values
``If America is to survive, there must be an American reawakening. We cannot continue down this destructive path or we will duplicate the fall of Rome and all other beaten civilizations in history. Before it is too late, we must have the courage and the decency to stand up for life, the family and all other principles that made this nation great.'' - The News & Observer of Raleigh, Jan. 22, 1993.
``This senator is not a goody-goody two shoes. I've lived a long time, but every Christian ethic cries out for me to do something. I call a spade a spade, a perverted human being a perverted human being.'' - The Los Angeles Times, Oct. 14, 1987.
Helms said voters ``sent me to Washington to vote no against excessive federal spending, against forced busing of little schoolchildren, and to vote no against the forces who have driven God out of the classroom.'' - News & Observer, June 26, 1983.
``I've always been a man who played principle over politics and if I lose, let them say about me, `Jesse - he never gave an inch.' '' - Life magazine, December 1983.
``Doodle.'' - The senator's epithet of choice, according to Ernest B. Ferguson's 1986 book ``Hard Right.'' Funding for the arts
``What is really at stake is whether or not America will allow the cultural high ground in this nation to sink slowly into an abyss of slime to placate people who clearly seek or are willing to destroy the Judaic-Christian foundations of this republic.'' - Oct. 24, 1990.
``This Mapplethorpe fellow was an acknowledged homosexual. He's dead now, but the homosexual theme goes throughout his work. . . . If someone wants to write ugly nasty things on the men's room wall, the taxpayers do not provide the crayon.'' - On the art of the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, The New York Times, July 28, 1989. Homosexuals
``Think about it. Homosexuals and lesbians, disgusting people marching in our streets demanding all sorts of things, including the right to marry each other. How do you like them apples?'' - Campaign speech, quoted in The Los Angeles Times, October 28, 1990.
On President Clinton's nomination of Roberta Achtenberg, a gay-rights activist, for a housing post: ``She's not your garden-variety lesbian. She's a militant-activist-mean lesbian, working her whole career to advance the homosexual agenda. . . . Now you think I'm going to sit still and let her be confirmed by the Senate? . . . If you want to call me a bigot, go ahead.'' - AP, May 7, 1993. AIDS
On an AIDS prevention comic book: ``The subject matter is so obscene, so revolting, it's difficult for me to stand here and talk about it. I may throw up.'' - The Los Angeles Times, Oct. 14, 1987.
On a a $600 million bill to fight AIDS: ``What originally began as a measured response to a public health emergency has become a weapon, frankly, for the deterioration of America's Judeo-Christian value system. There's not a chance this bill will be stopped because there's a powerful lobby out there in the media and in the homosexual community, and senators are scrambling to put their names on anything that has to do with AIDS.'' - The Associated Press, May 15, 1990. Race
``It is interesting to note that the Nobel Peace Prize won't be awarded this year. When one recalls that Martin Luther King got the prize last year, it may be just as well that the committee decided not to award one this year. Perhaps it was too difficult to choose between Stokely Carmichael and Ho Chi Minh.'' - Television commentary, 1966.
``Are civil rights only for Negroes? While women in Washington who have been raped and mugged on the streets in broad daylight have experienced the most revolting sort of violation of their civil rights. The hundreds of others who have had their purses snatched by Negro hoodlums may understandably insist that their right to walk the street unmolested was violated. - television commentary, 1963, quoted in The Charlotte Observer.
``You have to be so careful. Everything you say is going to offend somebody. I was on a talk show and was asked about something passing and I said, `Not a Chinaman's chance.' I got calls on that.'' - The Washington Post, July 17, 1980. Foreign policy
In August 1986, he attacked a federal investigation of one of his aides: ``That's nothing except the State Department trying to silence me and intimidate me. One day, they're going to learn they can't do that. . . . The people of the United States are a lot smarter than the yo-yos in the State Department.'' - AP.
A year ago, at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he lectured Secretary of State Warren Christopher: ``I challenge anybody to demonstrate that restoring Aristide to power in Haiti is worth one American life. . . . It was well known that Aristide was a murderer. Yet somebody decided to return him to power, if necessary, at the risk of American lives. Who is making these decisions?'' - Nov. 4, 1993.
At that hearing, he mocked President Clinton's foreign policy: ``When there's a policy nobody seems to be able to explain it. And if they do explain it, it changes the next day. And a familiar biblical warning comes to mind. If the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle? President Carter, you may recall, was criticized for blowing an uncertain trumpet. But there's nothing in the Bible that I know about an uncertain saxophone. It may be far worse.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Sen. Jesse Helms
KEYWORDS: BIOGRAPHY PROFILE QUOTATIONS by CNB