{"id":861,"date":"2008-07-04T09:36:48","date_gmt":"2008-07-04T16:36:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/?p=861"},"modified":"2008-07-04T11:40:01","modified_gmt":"2008-07-04T18:40:01","slug":"mmmmmsymbolic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/?p=861","title":{"rendered":"Mmmmm….Symbolic…."},"content":{"rendered":"

I imagine that I’m hardly the only (and certainly not the first) person to express the opinion that America received one of its bestest-ever birthday presents this Independence Day, when Repu Senator Jesse Helms<\/a> decided to slough his mortal coil and depart for that grand ol’ “Whites Only” country club in the sky. A spokesperson for the Jesse Helms Center For The Prevention of Miscegenation and Preservation of Purity of Essence—I’m pretty<\/em> sure that’s the name, have to double-check—announced that the Senator died at 1:15 this morning.<\/p>\n

The symbolism of Helms kicking the bucket on the 4th of July goes both ways, of course; so much so that I can’t help but wonder how much preplanning went into it. The cause of death has not yet been released. Given his penchant for political showmanship it’s not totally out of the question that, seeing both the holiday and the end drawing nigh and wanting to go out with—ahem—a bang, Senator Helms might have arranged for an aide to smother him with a pillow.<\/p>\n

Whatever the circumstances, and wherever he may be now, I will light a Roman Candle or two in his memory this evening. If everything I hope is fair and true turns out to be wrong, and his soul is indeed ascending toward its heavenly reward, there’s at least a infinitesimal chance that I’ll manage to shoot it down.<\/p>\n

Rest, Senator Helms. It’s not for me to say whether you do so in blissful peace, eternal torment or in solitary and entropic stillnes. For many of us, it’s enough that you rest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I imagine that I’m hardly the only (and certainly not the first) person to express the opinion that America received one of its bestest-ever birthday presents this Independence Day, when Repu Senator Jesse Helms decided to slough his mortal coil and depart for that grand ol’ “Whites Only” country club in the sky. A spokesperson […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-roominations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.uncle-andrew.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}