Support our investigative reporting on stories like these with a donation of $25 or more and receive a near-mint copy of this huge, full color, 24" X 36" political poster featuring the ugly mug of infamous right-wing former U.S. Senator Jesse Helms, R-N.C., hero and role model to fellow anti-LGBT bigot Sen. Ted Cruz, the far right-wing freshman Tea Party Senator from Texas and the GOP's first-announced presidential candidate for 2016.
The poster was designed in 1996 by legendary Los Angeles guerrilla artist Robbie Conal, commissioned and paid for by Pearl Jam.
The poster art was the centerpiece of the only cause-related show Pearl Jam played during their 1996 mini-US tour, an October "Retirement Party" in Charlotte, N.C. for Jesse Helms. Helms ran his final re-election campaign that year in a tight rematch against former Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt.
Pearl Jam also paid for t-shirts, stickers, and all kinds of swag featuring this artwork. Folded posters were given away at the concert. But the bulk of the 5,000 posters printed were hung up around the state by Robbie Conal and a crew of volunteers, in a guerrilla art effort similar to ones he has masterminded around the country since he first began designing giant political posters, in the mid-eighties, at the height of the Reagan Era.
At the top and bottom of the poster in red and blue lettering is the title: "LITTLE WHITE LIES." Then there's a full-color, super-ugly picture of Jesse Helms in the center, surrounded by black and white images representing the lies Helms told over the years in order to stay in power.
This poster has such a bona fide left-wing pedigree that it ended up on Al Pacino's office wall in the film The Insider (1999), when he played radical 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman. Lowell Bergman was Mike Douglas' producer for 15 years. He challenged the tobacco industry head on, and proved to the world that the corporate owners of CBS were ready to abandon the righteous legacy of that network's news division in a heartbeat if a story truly threatened their bottom line. His office at 60 Minutes had all kinds of cool political posters and memorabilia.
Since most posters were permanently affixed to walls, bus stops, dumpsters, buildings, etc. using glue, very few survived. This poster is in near-mint, unused condition, never folded, like it came straight from the presses. A collector's item.
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