Helms, who along with Thurmond is retiring from the Senate this year, said Lott's critics leapt on the comments "like a puppy dog on a dog biscuit."
"What did Trent Lott really say? He said that when Strom Thurmond ran, my state voted for him. He was at a function where Strom Thurmond, a hundred years old, was having his friends say the nicest things they could think of," Helms said. "Trent Lott in no sense was sending a message of any sort. He was just trying to be nice to Strom Thurmond at a time everybody was being nice to him, and I praise him for that."
{I saw Paul Hawken some years ago with Kesey and Stewart Brand and Gary Snyder. Hawken said something to the effect that if we waited, if we were patient, the old men would die off, though he put it more gently, the idea being that eventually the clenched grip of the reactionaries would loosen. it was around the same time that the concept of enlightened self-interest became a pre-meme meme. it didn't seem to me at the time that there was anything else to put in place of that but violent revolution, which was an impossibility in the America of the late 70's. but it also didn't seem that what Hawken was suggesting was going to be enough. the fact that Helms and Thurmond are retiring means almost nothing now. the sorrow, and the fear, so common they're indistinguishable from the traffic noise and the hum of the wires. anticipatory grief.soon they will be able to exhibit talking swine, literally, genetically-altered laboratory creatures of mixed heritage. it will require funding of course, and idle laboratory time. still, should that moment come, for some of us it will seem all too familiar.}
