Reply #55: Denial is not just a river in Egypt. [View All]

[Sapphocrat]

But there sure seems to be a flood in here.

BS, I suggest you start doing your homework before you go off half-cocked on subjects about which you obviously know very little. Try starting with some reputable sources for your links, instead of right-wing trash like the National Review. Then go hit religioustolerance.org, or hatecrimes.org, or someplace that will clue you in to the reality of the growing threat of theocracy -- which mandates death by stoning of homosexuals, among other things -- in America.

Second, I gather you're not here to win friends, but you're certainly not going to influence people by resorting to calling others, or their claims, "retarded." Not only did you just insult one of DU's most respected posters, but you have offended a large swath of DUers who A) don't cotton to using an archaic, negative term for the developmentally disabled, and B) have developmentally-disabled loved ones.

Hint: Spend some time understanding why "Manthrax" and "Ann the Man" insults leveled at Ann Coulter are below the belt (literally and figuratively), and you may get a clue about the use of the word "retarded."

As for Reagan, funding for AIDS came only under duress -- don't you dare pretend it came from the good of his blackened little heart.

Here's an excerpt from one of my own articles (MODS: Again, this is my article, and I give myself permission to quote as much as I like) -- I invite you to find fault with the conclusions:

There was no rationale (for the media's silence on AIDS in the 1980s) — unless you want to credit the stifling conservatism of the times. Ronald Reagan was in office, and bolstering his complete disregard for those filthy homosexuals was the newly-organized extremist wing of the Radical Right, led by the most phobic of homophobes, Jerry Falwell.

And then there was the president's plain, willful ignorance. Even his White House physician, Brigadier General John Hutton, stated that Reagan thought of AIDS as though "it was measles and would go away."

After Reagan's death, Allen White wrote:

By Feb. 1, 1983, 1,025 AIDS cases were reported, and at least 394 had died in the United States. Reagan said nothing. On April 23, 1984, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced 4,177 reported cases in America and 1,807 deaths. In San Francisco, the health department reported more than 500 cases. Again, Reagan said nothing. ...

With each diagnosis, the pain and suffering spread across America. Everyone seemed to now know someone infected with AIDS. At a White House state dinner, first lady Nancy Reagan expressed concern for a guest showing signs of significant weight loss.

That guest was Rock Hudson.

<snip>

There is no denying that Rock Hudson's death was probably the number-one catalyst that forced the public — especially Americans — to reconsider the AIDS controversy. "Rock Hudson's death gave AIDS a face," said Morgan Fairchild.

But more than two years would pass before Ronald Reagan would even acknowledge the existence of AIDS, much less provide funding for research.

Wrote Allen White:

... Reagan would ultimately address the issue of AIDS while president. His remarks came May 31, 1987 (near the end of his second term), at the Third International Conference on AIDS in Washington. When he spoke, 36,058 Americans had been diagnosed with AIDS and 20,849 had died. The disease had spread to 113 countries, with more than 50,000 cases. ...

Reagan could have chosen to end the homophobic rhetoric that flowed from so many in his administration. Dr. C. Everett Koop, Reagan's surgeon general, has said that because of "intradepartmental politics" he was cut out of all AIDS discussions for the first five years of the Reagan administration. The reason, he explained, was "because transmission of AIDS was understood to be primarily in the homosexual population and in those who abused intravenous drugs." The president's advisers, Koop said, "took the stand, 'They are only getting what they justly deserve.'"

<snip>

Revisionist history about Reagan must be rejected. Researchers, historians and AIDS experts who know the truth must not remain silent. Too many have died for that.

Yet it's hard to fight revisionist history about Reagan, when Reagan himself is at the core of it:

LARRY KING: AIDS — did — were we late on that?

REAGAN: I don't think — no, certainly we — it was a — we were not unnecessarily so. It was a plain case of catching up with things, and I immediately appointed a commission to get into the whole problem of AIDS and come back with the recommendations of what we could and should be doing.

KING: Do you think Rock Hudson focused a lot of our attention on it?

REAGAN: Oh, I think that brought a lot of attention to it, sure.

...

KING: Are you hopeful about it?

REAGAN: Well, yes, I think we have to be hopeful about it, or we'll find ourselves back in those days of the plagues... that wiped out millions of people.

-- "Larry King Live," January, 1990