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Nick Galifianakis

Today I learned that Nick Galifianakis lost the 1972 Senate race to Jesse Helms.

A friend posted a link to this 👇🏼 video in a text thread last night.

 

I go down early and I went back in this morning to reference the film referrenced in the clip. The Campaign1 was about a North Carolina congressional race. While looking up the reference I noticed that Zack's uncle was Nick Galifianakis2, who lost the Senate race to Jesse Helms3 in 1972.

Galifianakis was favored in that race, but Helms outspent him suggesting Nick was a communist, wasn't Christian, liked killing babies, and his Greek heritage made him un-American. Galifianakis served in the marines, earned a law degree, and was a professor at Duke. Meanwhile Helms, son of "Big Jesse" the local fire/police chief, started working at age 9, was voted most obnoxious as his senior superlative, very briefly attended Wingate college before going to work as a high school sports reporter where he created flyers for a colleague "Wake Up, White People" which led him to an admin assist gig DC where he worked for Richard Russel who coauthored the southern manifesto4 with Strom Thurmond in response to Brown vs BOE.

Helms returned to Raleigh and went to work for AJ Fletcher, the son of a preacher who helped start the Southern Baptist Convention and the Capital Broadcast Company which one of the first in the nation to produce daily opinion pieces. Helms' gig was writing inflammatory editorials such as one referring to UNC as "The University of Negros and Communist". Helms was largely responsible for bringing Reagan to Washington, blamed the liberal media for distorting Watergate, created a bill to allow religious schools to discriminate, helped found the Moral Majority5, filibustered the effort to establish MLK day, tried to gut the disability act, and tried to ban AIDS funding.

Helms last notable activities were a Senate ethics violation of releasing confidential documents accusing opposing party members of corruption, voting against RBG, and bragging about trying to make the first black woman in the senate6 cry by whistling Dixie. During his last re-election campaign in 1996, his campaign said that public schools were turning kids gay and mailed hundreds of thousands of official looking notices to black people telling them they were not eligible to vote. He beat Harvey Gannt7 52/48% outspending him 30 to 1. Gannt would have been first black Senator since reconstruction.

So I learned that Zach had a personal connection to politics and I think Nick Galifianakis might have been much better for our country.

Aside​

Right after I finished writing this, I went out to walk Iris and ran into my neighbor's kid in town from Seattle who said he "is friends with the guy who wrote The Campaign and performed at his wedding". Turns out he went to school right down the road, married Brooke Sheilds, and created the Funny or Die website8.

 
 

Footnotes​

  1. The Campaign - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Campaign_(film) ↩

  2. Nick Galifianakis - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Galifianakis_(politician) ↩

  3. Jesse Helms - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Helms ↩

  4. Southern Manifesto - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Manifesto ↩

  5. Moral Majority - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Majority ↩

  6. Carol Moseley Braun - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Moseley_Braun ↩

  7. Harvey Gantt - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Gantt ↩

  8. Chris Henchy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Henchy ↩