"In 1989, he drew national attention for an attack on the
National Endowment for the Arts after it funded works he considered
homoerotic and anti-Christian," the Washington Post
obit of Jesse Helms reads, without telling us
whether it too might have characterized those works -- which remain
unidentified -- as homoerotic and anti-Christian. The purpose, of
course, is to suggest that Helms was off his bigoted rocker.
At least the New York Times does the more responsible
thing by providing context and naming names, if still
somewhat euphemistically:
In the 1980's he took on the National Endowment for the
Arts for subsidizing art that he found offensive, chiefly that of
the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, who explored gay themes in
some of his work, and of the artist Andres Serrano, who depicted a
crucifix submerged in urine.
Regardless of the fusillade of condemnations his death has set
off from all the usual sources -- and some new ones, such as the
Post's online "On Faith" column, where writer David Waters only pretends to follow his
grandfather's injunction not to speak ill of the dead (and don't
miss the comments here) -- suffice it to say that Helms will
forever have the last word. He died on July 4.
