Jesse Helms

And she couldn't answer the question, what changed? What changed? And not for nothing.

I believe the candidate, and I think the year was 1990 in North Carolina, it was Jesse Helms versus Harvey Gant.

Very famous ad of black hands or white hands crumbling up an employment application with the inference being that it was affirmative action that did it.

And there's been some racist ads, particularly during the Trump era.

So we're witnessing a national battle of ideologies.

about what this country should be north carolina also it seems to be at the epicenter of this it may play a pivotal role in control of the senate because we have this context contest between former governor democratic governor roy cooper who has never lost an election and former gop chair michael whatley who has never been in an election because he's never held elected office But you covered in your time at The Observer another consequential Senate race in North Carolina between Republican Jesse Helms and former Democratic Mayor of Charlotte Harvey Gantt.

This, too, was a battle of ideologies.

Old versus New South, civil rights icon versus openly former open segregationists, black progressive against white conservative.

There are a lot of similarities.

That race was, at least for me, the earliest where I could see that there were some pretty unseemly things being done on the campaigns.

And this campaign in particular, I felt like Jesse Helms was taking advantage of race and other issues.

But it's interesting that we tried very hard to keep people focused on issues, and we did, I think, to a large extent.

I was still a kid.

But this is back in 1984 when Jesse Helms was running against Jim Hunt.

And Jesse Helms had this ad, and basically the tagline was, where do you stand, Jim? And he had all these people in the commercial, and they were talking about the stances on things, and they go, where do you stand, Jim? And I've never forgotten that.

And they even had, like the Helms campaign had some bumper stickers that said the same thing they used to pass out.

It said, where do you stand, Jim? But I remember that in 1984.

You probably noticed that one text is referring to another at one point in your reading, and so let's go there.

Page 1712, the right-hand margin, The context for this, of course, is Butler talking about Jesse Helms having deplored male homosexuality in attacking the photography of Robert Mapplethorpe and, by implication, Butler argues, simply erasing female homosexuality because his diatribe pays no attention to it.

Butler then complains that there's a certain injustice in that because in a way it's even worse, she says, to be declared nonexistent than it is to be declared deviant.

At least the male homosexual gets to be declared deviant.