Quick Quiz: Jesse Helms (Part 2)

1) What was Jesse Helms's nickname?

"Senator No."

"The Tar Heel Terror."

"Jolly Jesse."

2) How did Jesse Helms explain his 1993 vote against confirming President Clinton's nominee Roberta Achtenberg as an assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development?

"She's a damn lawyer. I think we already have enough lawyers running the country."

"She's from San Francisco, one of those hippie Commies. Thank you very much, but I don't need some hippie Commie over at HUD giving houses away to Negroes."

"She's a damn lesbian. I am not going to put a lesbian in a position like that. If you want to call me a bigot, fine."

3) How did Jesse Helms describe the kind of lesbian that Roberta Achtenberg wasn't and the kind of lesbian she was?

"She's not an easy-going lesbian. She's a trouble-making lesbian."

"She's not your garden-variety lesbian. She's a militant-activist-mean lesbian."

"She's not a closeted lesbian. She's an out-there-shooting-her-mouth-off, proud-to-be-perverted, probably-witchcraft-practicing lesbian."

4) True or false? When 18-year-old Ryan White died of AIDS and his mother went to Washington to speak to members of Congress about the disease, Jesse Helms was one of the most sympathetic listeners.

True. He took her under his wing and introduced her to almost two dozen legislators.

False. Though she did meet with almost two dozen legislators, Helms was not one of them, as he refused to speak to her even when he found himself alone with her in an elevator. See, since Helms believed the disease came from "unnatural" and "disgusting" behavior - "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country," he said, "that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy" - it followed logically that he should be uncivil to the mother of a hemophiliac boy who contracted the disease at 13 from a contaminated blood supply. Yes, he really was that much of a dick.

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