Posted on 03/08/2007 10:56:05 AM PST by jacknhoo
"And the Band Played On" was a great movie made for HBO. I believe it's out on video now. A great historical perspective on how it started and the politics involved. Alan Alda plays a truly magnificent bastard...
Come on, now. You've been here at Freerepublic long enough to know that we don't say "a-hole", we say "Clymer".
Actually it would not be a problem if it was treated as a STD, instead we passed laws that gave this disease civil rights.
I never saw the movie or read the book. I read about the book a few times in histories of the AIDS "crisis". I think what got me most was that in spite of how often some "gays" get "popular" media coverage, the general public (myself included until I read about it) barely knew (even now) that someone in the "gay" community like Mr. Shiltz even existed in the early part of the era.
The only comparable item on the same issue was a public health official in New York a few years ago. He was skewered by the "gay community" and the media for using what they called "scare tactics" when he warned users of certain recreational drugs that if they were also engaged in promiscuous and unprotected sex their drug use could make them even more vulnerable to infection if exposed to HIV.
Apparently the particular drugs he was referring to have some following in the "gay" community and hospitals in New York were seeing a spike in HIV infections and a larger than previously noticed contingent in that spike was people using those drugs.
In addition to the "scare tactic" charge against him, his information was deemed "homophobic" because it (they said) identified "drug users" of that particular drug as "gay"; when in fact the only thing he did was point to the data and in fact the data he pointed to did not identify the HIV infected person as male, female or "gay", only that a then recent higher-than-usual number of them were users of that drug.
But, like Mr. Shiltz in his day, the "perception" of the story was not one the "community" wanted to hear, and they got their media friends to try to humiliate the guy. Actually, when I saw him on TV a couple times, I thought he himself was gay. I don't know that but I am sure that even if it was true, it would not (or it did not) matter to those who wanted him to shut up.
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