Often vilified by the liberal elite, Ann Coulter has been showing more journalistic talent in her columns lately than most liberal rags contain in a weeks worth of papers. This continues in her column in today’s Human Events, The New York Times vs. Helms, Part 529,876.

Like Ann tells us, most people didn’t know Senator Helms and his wife Dot adopted a 9-year old son with cerebral palsy. Having already had two children, and Senator Helms in his early forties, the couple adopted their son Charlie when they read his Christmas wish in the News and Observer. For Christmas, all Charlie wanted was a mom and a dad. In Senator Helms and Dot, he found just that.

I just learned about that story this weekend, buried amongst all the liberal whining and name-calling that most pieces decided to interject about Senator Helms’ life. I’m glad someone had the courage to speak more than talking points and gave those of us who admired him but never met him a greater insight into his true character. But that isn’t even the greatest story about Senator Helms never told. His history with Harvey Gantt is much more intriguing.

The media couldn’t spend 10 seconds talking about Helms without calling him a racist, in part because of the ad he ran in 1990 against Harvey Gantt and Gantt’s support for Racial Quotas. First, the ad isn’t racist… just because you oppose racial quotas does not make you a member of the KKK… it just means that like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, you want people to be judged on the content of their character and not the color of their skin. But the ad isn’t the point… the point is that the media never seems to mention that the Senate race of 1990 wasn’t the first time Harvey Gantt was associated with Senator Helms… and in 1963 Jesse Helms was a big fan of Mr Gantt.

In January 1963, a decade before Helms would run for office, he editorialized about Harvey Gantt, the first black student to be admitted to Clemson University in South Carolina.

Helms praised Gantt to the skies, saying he had “stoutly resisted the pose of a conquering hero” and had “turned away from the liberal press and television networks which would glorify him.” Gantt, Helms said, just wanted to be an architect and “Clemson is the only college in South Carolina that can teach him how to be one.”

Ann Coulter is right… “[f]unny how that little tidbit didn’t make the Times obituary”… or virtually anywhere else for that matter. You would think the local press here in Raleigh would have at least mentioned it once or twice, but they’ve been too busy making a hero out of some Jackass trying to spit on Senator Helms’ grave.