Putdown for Helms, pass for M.L. King, Jr.(Correction notice)

ITEM: A new book by former Senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), entitled Here's Where I Stand, was reviewed in an Associated Press news story that appeared in the Washington Post for August 30. In the piece, Helms was referred to as the "Senate's leading archconservative for 30 years." The article goes on to mockingly recount that Helms "rejected the notion that racist tendencies drove him to oppose the creation of a national Martin Luther King Jr. holiday." In his book, says the AP account, "Helms contends that [he was against the holiday because] King's advisers included communist sympathizers."

CORRECTION: The liberal media here fall back into their well-worn bag of tricks: Jesse Helms, for example, is labeled as an "archconservative" (though corresponding tags are rarely applied to left-wing extremists). To discredit the media-created image of him, Helms denies that he is a racist, thus planting the seed in the minds of unwary readers that there may be something to the charge or else it would not have been mentioned.

Saying that Helms "contends" that Martin Luther King had Communist ties --so as to suggest that those ties may not have existed--is especially galling and deliberately misleading. The senator, of course, was very aware, as were liberal politicians in Washington, that several of King's top advisers were indeed Communists. These included Hunter Pitts O'Dell, who had been a secret member of the governing body of the Communist Party in the United States, and Stanley Levison (whom ...