Years before Harlan Ellison became my Uncle Harlan, I was fortunate enough to see him do a public speaking gig at the University of North Carolina. At one point he went into a deadly riff about our wingnut senator, Jesse Helms.

"Hey, you don't have to live with him!" someone in the audience shouted.

"Neither do you," Ellison shot back.

But unfortunately, those of us who grew up partly or entirely in North Carolina did have to live with "Jesse," as haters and lovers alike called him, since we could never muster quite enough opposition to vote the old bastard out of office. He may not be burning in Hell today, because it seems to me that a person should be able to state and live* his fucked-up convictions without being condemned to eternal torment (if eternal torment there be), but if he did make it to Heaven, he is surely due for some surprises there.

*Short of slaughtering, interning, etc. the people you don't like, obviously, though I expect Jesse wouldn't have minded setting up a few concentration camps if he had been able to.