We don't remember them to fondly, either.
Posted on 06/09/2004 8:45:30 AM PDT by J. Semper Paratus
Edited on 06/09/2004 8:47:29 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
SAN FRANCISCO — As one of the first physicians to confront AIDS when it began its rampage through the gay community, Dr. Marcus Conant lobbied the Reagan administration in 1982 to launch an emergency campaign to educate Americans about the disease.
It took the president five more years to publicly mention the crisis. By then, almost 21,000 Americans had died and thousands more had been diagnosed.
Conant, who lost scores of friends and patients to the disease, is still deeply angry — one of many Americans who view Reagan's legacy in a harsh light.
"Ronald Reagan and his administration could have made a substantial difference, but for ideological reasons, political reasons, moral reasons, they didn't do it," said the San Francisco dermatologist, who now deals with a new generation of AIDS patients. "President Reagan and his administration committed a crime, not just a sin."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Whenever this comes up, I'm going to remind people of the Bug Chasers and the Bareback Riders, those who either actively seek AIDS as some means of "belonging", or the ones who don't care about protection and are proud of it and advertise it.
The fact that AIDS was spread through sexual contact was commonly known VERY early. Gays chose to continue their bathhouse lifestyle and to bitterly oppose standard epidemiological practices to contain the growing epidemic (lists of partners, condoms, testing, notification, etc). To blame Reagan instead of themselves is further evidence of mental illness.
By the end of the week the liberal press will be blaming every mality imaginable on this beloved statesman.
Yep. Ya can't fool me, no siree. I KNOW the truth! I got it all figgered out.
How do they justify the thought that an outside entity as distant as the federal government could have dictated to them to stop attending the numerous gay bath house orgies?
There are many America hating groups on Yahoo! these days. I wouldn't be suprised if this is how terrorist cells are communicating.
Reagan's great accomplishments have so much power that the Left must rationalize, minimize and distort away Reagan's memory before much of the nation is swept into a remembrance of the fact that conservatism, like Reagan's made huge sense in his day... and still does.
If millions of Americans felt good under Reagan, and they remember his conservative governance was why they felt that way, they will long for, and vote for, the closest candidate in the next election who exemplifies the Reagan ideal:
George W. Bush.
There is plenty of blame to spread around, but expecting Reagan to come up with a public education program in '82 when most gay activists were vociferously opposing the very idea that GRID could even be contagious is asking just a little too much. These were people who greeted the common-sense idea of shutting down the bath-houses with screams of "Nazi oppression!"We were talking about this the other day on a mailing list and I mentioned that yes, perhaps Reagan, his liberal HHS secretary, and his hyper-competent Surgeon General didn't react quite as quickly as they could have. But they saw other diseases as a bigger threat, and quite frankly didn't see the "at risk" populations taking the obvious precautions. I observed that when someone runs around outside in cold rain without a coat and later gets the flu, our sympathy for them tends to be limited.Anyone who wants to relive the events leading up to this epidemic is encouraged to read And The Band Played On by the late Randy Shilts. Shilts was certainly no friend of the Reagan administration (he was gay himself and finally died of AIDS) but he was also an eyewitness to the absurdly self-destructive politics that so hindered San Francisco's, and the country's, response to the burgeoning plague. The truth is that gay politics is far more responsible for AIDS deaths than conservative politics, and transferring blame to Reagan is simply a way to avoid taking the responsibility themselves.
The fact is we still don't know for sure causes AIDS. But we certainly know how it's spread.
-Eric
Wouldn't the appropriate reaction have been quarantine? Of course, we know why that was never tried.
The same way the incredibly mentally disturbed Sam Burns does, by dismissing Bug Chasers as an urban legend, even after actually interacting with one of them.
Note to all - The link above has some profanity.
Fantastically insane quote: .... I think much of the "bug chaser" talk is most likely urban legend.
Most likely??? 
Who, in 1982, DIDN'T know how to PREVENT the spread of AIDS?
The logical thing to do here would be to sue some tobacco company...
I knew your remarks were made tongue-in-cheek, in a very non-San Francisco sort of way.
Yeah right. I saw a young man San Francisco man interviewed on TV who admitted to bug chasing because he wanted to get the attention that many of his former sex partners were getting since they had contracted HIV.
Urban legend my eye.
How is this "news?" It isn't. It's just an AP reporter making sure that Ronald Reagan can't even go to his grave without being properly smeared by left-leaning mouthpieces. Carter hasn't got that long to live. You watch, when he goes there will be none of this. It'll be "Saint Jimmy" 24-by-7, in spite of the fact that he was one of the worst Presidents the United States ever had. It's hard to think of a single thing that didn't go wrong under "President Malaise." But we won't hear a word of it. The bias is so blatant now it practically jumps off the page at you. |
So some gay former air traffic controller has a hardon for Reagan!
As Nelson Muntz says, "Ha ha!"
"Let's talk about AIDS, shall we? The disease was first identified in 1981. According to the Congressional Research Service, in the course of the Reagan presidency the federal government spent a total of $5.7 billion on AIDS alone. No individual disease or epidemic received as much. Period."
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I'm sure it's true that many don't remember Reagan fondly, but is this really the week for the Associated Press to run out and interview a bunch of them so that we know what they think?