To Their Coy Senator

As a scholar of the American past, the most powerful tool I have access to is ProQuest Historical Newspapers—basically, Google for newspapers going back to the 19th century. What with the passing of good ol' Senator Helms, and the lionization of him across the conservative firmament as an exemplary citizen and man of principle (turns out when conservatives spent all that energy denouncing Trent Lott a few years back, they were only kidding), I thought I'd do a little canvass to find some of that particular ghoul's stranger and more obscure effusions from over the years.

My, what fun!

Here's a New York Times article from October of 1966:

CHAPEL HILL, N.C, Oct. 22—"To His Coy Mistress," a poem about seduction written more than 300 years ago by Andrew Marvell, one of the great poets of the Puritan period in England, has risen to stir a tempest on the campus of the University of North Carolina.

An instructor has been transferred from teaching to research duties. Students are mounting protests. Faculty members are disturbed. Chancellor Carlyle Sitterson, who recommended the transfer, has had to issue a clarifying statement in justification for his stand.

The clouds began to gather when Michael Paull, an instructor in freshman English, assigned his class to write a theme on the subject of "To His Coy Mistress," a poem that appears in many college textbooks and anthologies used in classwork. The resulting themes were read aloud and some of the students found them embarrassing. At least one regarded some of them as vulgar. The instructor, also somewhat embarrassed, asked that the themes be rewritten.

One of the students apparently wrote her parents about the incident and the parents brought it to the attention of WRAL-TV, a television station in Raleigh with right-wing views that has been a frequent critic of liberalism at the university. Only days before, Jesse Helms, commentator for the station, had been critical of an article on physical love that appeared in The Carolina Quarterly, the campus literary magazine of whih Mr. Paull is the editor.

All 22 of Mr. Paull's students signed petitions requesting his return to teaching duties. Between 200 and 300 students and faculty members, organized into the Committee for Free Inquiry, met and asked that Mr. Paull be reinstated and that a review board be set up in the English department 'to determine whether or not Mr. Paull's effectiveness as a teacher been damaged to such a degree as to necessitate his reassignment to nonteaching functions."

Some newspapers expressed concern. The Greensboro Daily News declared, "The spectacle of a great university 'reassigning' its instructors at the behest of a bullying television pundit is hardly believable." The Daily Tar Heel, campus newspaper, headed its editorial, Who's afraid of Jesse Helms? The university—that's who."...

The poem, in which a lover praises the form of his mistress and urges her not to be so shy, contains these lines:

The beauty shall no more be found.

Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound.

The beauty shall no more be found.

My echoing song: then worms shall try

That long preserved virginity.

And your quaint honor turns to dust.

And into ashes all my lust.

The grave's a fine and private place.

But none, I think, do there embrace.

Conservatives reading this might not object to the censorship of the works of 17th century Puritans. They might, however, wish to take note of all the glaring examples of stone hypocrisy in which their supposed pure-hearted conservative idealist engaged. On October 24, for example, an article informs us of how the conscience of the conservative movement, the man who never wavered from his principles, ran for Senate a Nixon Republican in 1972 after spending the last four years painting him as Satan's own son.

Nixon announces he's going to China; Helms goes on TV and says, "And Richard Nixon, the man who won his spurs in politics as an anti-Communist, is now—well, you know about his appeasement of the Chinese Communists in Peking."

Helms announces he's running for Senate; reader, he married him. Puts up posters reading Nixon-Helms, says he was only using "literary license" when he brought up that "appeasement" business. And that he thought the China trip "turned out so well."

Principled!

There are the endless examples of this supposed champion of conservative economic laissez-faire policies delivering corporate welfare to North Carolina.

Then there is this masterpiece, from the Associated Press on March 29, 1973:

Hose down streakers, Helms says

WASHINGTON, March 29—Sen. Jesse Helms has seriously suggeste that college streakers be herded naked into football stadiums, hosed down with cold water from time to time, and held in that state overnight.

In a column which Helms sent this week to North Caolina newspapers, he said the streaking fad was 'far more serious than youthful frivolity' and was cause for concern about the country's future.

"In my judgment college authorities ought to take all the naked students into custody and herd them into a football stadium under guard and then require them to spend the night naked unti their mothers come and request their release.

"It might be useful to hose down the streakers with cold water every 15 or 20 minutes."

Maybe that's where John Yoo got the idea.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future