Defining Helms

On the subject of conservatives lavishing praise on Jesse Helms, I'm guessing that conservatives feel they have no choice but to embrace and defend Helms. (Douthat and Boot, and Jonathan Rauch in 2002, are notables who are not under this illusion. One is tempted to include pseudo-(neo)conservative Hitchens here as well - but who will Hitchens not throw under the bus just for the sake of gleeful disloyalty?) But anyway the more conservatives embrace him, the greater ease with which the media can portray him as a conservative or Republican "icon," someone whose racism and homophobia not only comports with but epitomizes the racist and homophobic DNA of the modern Republican party (in the sense that the modern Republican Party was birthed from an electoral realignment in which racial politics were determinative and in which southern whites became the base of the Party). This media treatment is politically beneficial for liberals and Democrats.

If the media can't bring itself to actually call Helms what he was (a disgusting, raving, delusional bigot), the next best thing is for them to call him a "conservative icon."