Thank you, Jesse.

• Position: Out Back

I write this one week after Jesse Helms went under the knife to replace a worn-out pig valve in his heart. His enemies -- and they are legion -- express wonder that the sliver of swine had not long ago rejected its host. Their fellows sneer and quip: Why? It was a perfect match. The amazing thing, they add, was that the doctors were able to find a heart to fix.

Hyperbole -- the cruel, callous, cutting kind -- befits our senior senator, if not his present situation. After all, it's a weapon he has wielded so frequently and fervently, one that neither old age nor infirmity has nudged from his grip. He had mastered it long before I first encountered him, glaring from a black-and-white TV screen, as a freshman 35 years ago at "the University of Negroes and Communists." The three decades since he abandoned his broadcast booth for a global bully pulpit have only honed his invective prowess.

Last Aug. 22, Lane Barnhill, our advertising director, and I were returning from Raleigh, listening to the car radio as he announced he would not run again. She grew sad. "There has to be something he's done that you liked," she said. I thought hard but came up empty. To me, Jesse Helms -- the Jesse Helms I know as conservative demagogue -- signifies what is most mean-spirited about us as a people. His political foes claim he doesn't represent North Carolina, that he's but a relic of our racist past, like bones that don't stay buried. I believe they view Tar Heel history through a liberal's blinders. Worse, they denigrate the double-edged blade that is democracy. As one of his campaign slogans so truly proclaimed, "He's one of us."

I have never hated the man but despise many of the things he stands for. But even the most rabid anti-Helmsite would have to concede that, when it comes to constituent services, no one is better. As this magazine stated 11 years ago, "From the day he joined the Senate in 1973, Helms has...