Couldn't happen to a nicer fella

Christopher Hitchens considers the shade of Jesse Helms and gives it the Hitchens once-over:

It seemed somehow profane that Sen. Jesse Helms should have managed to depart this life on the 232^nd anniversary of the declaration of American independence. To die on the Fourth of July, one can perhaps be forgiven for feeling, is or ought to be a privilege reserved for men of the stamp of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, both of whom expired on that day in 1826, 50 years after the promulgation of the declaration. One doesn't want the occasion sullied by the obsequies for a senile racist buffoon.