Elizabeth Dole and a Dose of Irony

It’s one thing to be ignorant, it’s another to be insensitive and still another to be a jerk. Elizabeth Dole falls in that last category. Harsh words for the Republican Senator from North Carolina? Hardly. Consider this little scenario.

The Senate is passing a bill for HIV/AIDS relief. Much of this will flow to foreign countries to provide much needed funds to fight the diseases as well as malaria and tuberculosis. It is part of a global strategy to combat HIV/AIDS in developing countries and primarily Africa.

Senator Dole jumped in at the last minute and offered an amendment. Now, knowing she is a Republican you might imagine it would be to limit funds to certain groups who opposed family planning, or some other ideologically driven caveat that would hamstring the process and prevent the bill from reaching the people who need the relief. Nope, I have to hand it to Elizabeth, she did no such thing. Instead she simply wanted to change the name of the bill.

Now I ask you what would you as a clear thinking individual want to name an HIV/AIDS Relief Bill? Maybe something that honors the millions of people worldwide who have succumbed to the disease? Nope. Maybe after a prominent researcher or activist who has fought for better funding and treatment? Nope. Liz introduced the bright idea of naming the bill after the late not-so-great Jesse Helms!

That’s where the “jerk” part comes in. Jesse Helms was a bigoted old coot of a Senator who opposed every kind of AIDS funding, education and treatment he could find. I offer as proof his description of an AIDS prevention pamphlet as “so obscene, so revolting, I may throw up." This is a man who fought to block the Ryan White bill because he felt people who contracted AIDS did so because of their "deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct."

I could spend the rest of this column detailing how hateful and divisive Helms was on LGBT rights and AIDS prevention, civil rights, voting rights, integration, not to mention Roe v. Wade, but I find it in Jesse’s words, “so obscene, so revolting, I may throw up."

Naming this bill after Helms is either the biggest example of a brain dead politician, or a deliberate slap in the face to every activist, researcher and politician who has ever worked to pry AIDS funds from the hands of Uncle Sam.

I know Elizabeth Dole is not a stupid woman. I know she is a skilled politician. As such she certainly has the sensitivity to know that this ludicrous amendment would never fly, and yet she proposed it anyway. That, I can only believe was done as an insult and intended to be as hurtful as Senator Helms used to be. Perhaps it is a fitting tribute to a man who sang “Dixie” in the elevator with the first African- American woman elected to the Senate, Carol Moseley-Braun.

To imagine that Senator Dole just somehow forgot the legacy of hate left behind by Jesse Helms is to ignore the reality of the situation. Perhaps Senator Dole knows that the GOP time in the legislature is limited. A sweeping victory by Barack Obama may just wash over the Senate and House as well. Maybe Dole is just getting in her parting shot, shooting the finger at the media and the American public before she is washed from the landscape of politics. Let the tidal wave commence!