Geov Parrish is... ummmm... ahhhh... oh, how to put this delicately...?
... you know... :)
Posted on 06/08/2004 10:02:51 PM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
Excuse me while I barf. I’m in no mood to join the joyful eulogies upon the passing of Ronald Reagan—remembrances that prove, once again, the staggering size of our country’s memory hole. I missed the 1960s. I grew up in Middle America, with Watergate, barely, and the benign buffoonery of Presidents Ford and Carter. When Reagan was elected president, it was an inexplicable, savage turn for a country that I’d never realized was capable of such things.
It’s not just that George W. Bush would have been impossible without Reagan. The presidency of Reagan himself was so bad, on so many levels, that as young adults a sizable number of us could only sputter in impotent rage, a rage summed up nicely by the Crucifucks song “Hinckley Had a Vision.” It simply made no sense that an entire country could be run by sinister thugs, all because its spokesperson was a washed-up actor with the professional training to deliver the most ridiculous, venal lies with a calming “Great Communicator” demeanor.
Great Communicator, my ass. Tens of thousands of us died of AIDS on his watch, and he never even once mentioned the word. He also refused to adequately fund AIDS research—a critical delay that, we now know, could have saved countless lives. We seem to have forgotten that now.
We’ve also forgotten the corruption—not just the Constitution-shredding outrage of the Iran-Contra scandal, but a modern record for the number of criminally indicted officials.
It was the Great Communicator whose era gave us the term, and scourge, of homelessness. It was Reagan who launched an illegal war in Nicaragua, Reagan who unleashed and praised Guatemala’s genocide and El Salvador’s death squads. Reagan whose tax cuts and funding choices launched a class war at home, a class war still being waged, successfully, by many of the same officials, 20 years later.
And excuse me, but Ronald Reagan did not end communism. Hundreds of thousands of courageous people, in Moscow and Gdansk and Prague and across the communist bloc, deserve the credit for risking their lives to bring down tyrannical governments, often with nothing more than the willingness to sacrifice their own bodies. They risked everything. Reagan risked nothing but an inadvertent record deficit it took a decade and a Democratic president to heal.
To honor Reagan as the triumphant Cold Warrior, without even mentioning the courage of all those ordinary people, is an insult of staggering proportions. Ronald Reagan had a historic meltdown of an empire happen during his tenure; he was no more responsible for it than George W. Bush was responsible for another, less positive cataclysm in 2001. Less, even. At least the CIA knew something like 9/11 was in the works. They had no idea the Iron Curtain would collapse.
Last week, I mourned the passing of David Dellinger, a contemporary of Reagan’s who exemplified, far better than Ronnie ever could, courage and integrity and compassion. Dellinger spent his adult life speaking truth to power; Reagan spent his making things up for an audience. One was an apostle of selfless love; the other presided over the Me Decade.
Not all of us spent that decade obsessing over our investments and stepping over the homeless. For much of my 20s, I helped organize protests of hundreds of thousands of people on the Mall and at the Pentagon and elsewhere in Washington, D.C. Most of us are still around. Most of us remember the profound sense of shock as we watched our country become a place we didn’t recognize, led by a genial, seemingly clueless man with an agenda that was on many levels simply evil.
Sound familiar? Forget the obituaries; I can hardly wait to unseat Ronald Reagan’s heir in November.
I wonder how many people would have died of AIDS had they not engaged in homosexual activities or abused drugs? I wonder what they think President Reagan could have done about that? They would have called him every name in the book for sticking his nose in "their sex life" such as HOMOPHOBE, one of their favorites. I suppose he was suppose to throw our HARD EARNED tax money at a bunch of irresponsible perverted sex addicts to stop them from killing one another. Or maybe he should have handed out more needles to the drug addicts.
This is your typical young leftist that in his (short) adult life never new anyone but Clinton as President, and he doesn't grasp the concept that leadership of the country *changes* from time to time.
He spouts the typical leftist line that AIDS was caused by a lack of funding, instead of people with penises in other people's butts. Nevermind that the focus on cancer (esp. breast cancer) research in the 80's has saved millions more lives than even all of the total infections of AIDS. Never mind that "cures" for viruses are basically impossible and even twenty years and a billion dollars later, we're no closer to understanding AIDS.
Of course, it's important to remember that to people like this... poverty is *caused* by wealth. So... as it has been said: "Some men, you just can't reach."
"Tens of thousands of us died of AIDS on his watch"
Don't engage in intercourse with other men. It's quite easy to avoid.
I had to look up
David Dellinger, age 54 at the time of trial, was the Chicago Seven's old man. The stern, evangelical Christian Socialist
ROFLMAO>>>>>>>>>>>>
David Dellinger?
Last week, I mourned the passing of David Dellinger, a contemporary of Reagan’s who exemplified, far better than Ronnie ever could, courage and integrity and compassion. Dellinger spent his adult life speaking truth to power; Reagan spent his making things up for an audience. One was an apostle of selfless love; the other presided over the Me Decade.
ROFLAMO.......he was one of the Chicago 7!
Geov Parrish is... ummmm... ahhhh... oh, how to put this delicately...?
... you know... :)
Just saw a revival of one of the earliest, smartest, and angriest AIDS plays, Larry Kramer's THE NORMAL HEART, written in the mid 1980s. Kramer was a surprisingly non-PC gay NYC guy who'd already had a career as an executive with Columbia pictures and had written the screenplay for the film WOMEN IN LOVE, from the D. H. Lawrence novel. The Reagan Administration is barely even mentioned or evoked in Kramer's play---Kramer's wrath is saved for the then current NYC mayor Ed Koch, who everyone knew was gay,and trying to hide it, and who it took 17 months to get an audience with, while the crisis spread in NYC, and Kramer watched his friends die off every week because they would not sober up and stop seeing themselves as victims, and just exert a little self-control in the bathhouses, and in their personal relations.Kramer, as far as I know, was the ONLY high profile gay writer/journalist who made these points and talked himself hoarse trying to make his own gay community listen to a little common sense.
That "us" is the same non-existent population that Libs evoke when they say Bush sent "our kids" to war in Iraq.
Lefty logic is "I should be free to do whatever I want, whenever I want, but if I injure/infect myself in the process, it is the governments job to save me."
Amen, brother. Richard Nixon declared a "War on Cancer" back in 1971. Thirty-four years later, we've still got cancer.
There are types of cancer that don't seem to have a cause. You can only treat those types of cancers after the fact. But everyone knows what causes AIDS.
Cancer comes to you without an invitation. If you want AIDS, you've got to go get it.
**************
"Tens of thousands of us died.." Who is "us"?
Geov Parrish is... ummmm... ahhhh... oh, how to put this delicately...?
... you know... :)
I imagine this man must have felt much the same way:
Hmmm...he didn't even mention who was his great President. Too obvious to him that AIDS deaths didn't stop during the reign of King Worthless Clowntunicus?
We need to shine a spotlight on all these leftist, walking, talking bowel movements. It shows the American people what kind of sewer the Demoncratic party has become. We need to nail these turds to them!"Do you support these kinds of creeps?" "If so then vote Democrat."
BTTT
A least he isn't putting on a false show of respect for Reagan, like Kerry & his ilk.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.