Helms versus old cartoonist foe

Jesse Helms - 1921-2008: Left: Getty Images Photo; Right: Caricature by Doug Marlette.The New York Times is reporting that former U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), who spent 30 years in Congress, died at 1:15 a.m. on July 4.

Helms, who first became known to North Carolina voters as a newspaper and television commentator, won election to the Senate in 1972 and decided not to run for a sixth term in 2002.

As a cartoonist, when I think of Helms, it may be fitting that I think of an old foe of his who also lost his life a short while ago, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Doug Marlette of the Charlotte Observer, who died last year in an automobile accident in Marshall County, Miss.

Marlette railed against Helms and his racial vision, "separate but equal," which is how Marlett drew Helms in his horn-rimmed glasses with a single dot way off to the right side of one lens and the other one straining in the opposite direction.

He was a harsh critic of the North Carolina senator, who was very negative in his tone when speaking of blacks, gays and lesbians, blaming them for "the proliferation of AIDS."

In 1983, he opposed the creation of a federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King and referred to the University of North Carolina as the "University of Negroes and Communists."

1984 U.S. Senate race: Cartoonist Doug Marlette criticized Helms for what he thought was a dirty campaign.

Perhaps Marlette's most controversial cartoon about Helms was the one seen above.

From Marlette's book, In Your Face - A Cartoonist at Work:
       

The cartoon that generated the most negative response concerned Helm's victory over former governor Jim Hunt in the notoriously nasty 1984 U.S. Senate race, which set the standard for negative campaigning in the eighties.

This cartoon got into the paper just by the skin of its teeth. Only one editor supported it, and that was because he'd once been the Washington correspondent and had covered Jesse's mean-spiritedness up close. After a lot of debate, the decision was made to postpone the cartoon a few days.

Needless to say, Helms didn't ask for the original of that one, but the switchboards lit up. His supporters were outraged by this insult to their hero during his hour of triumph. His opponents were ecstatic.