Posted on 05/30/2014 5:28:57 PM PDT by Kaslin
It's been 10 years since Ronald Reagan passed away, but one horrible myth about him will not die. When he passed, The Advocate magazine published an essay by radical gay playwright Larry Kramer titled "Adolf Reagan." The rant began: "Our murderer is dead. The man who murdered more gay people than anyone in the entire history of the world, is dead. More people than Hitler even."
In Kramer's fever swamp of a brain, Reagan caused AIDS. He reveled in its fatalities. Now HBO is honoring Kramer's unceasing hatred by making a TV movie out of his hate-filled 1985 play/jeremiad "The Normal Heart." The movie ends with a "historic" note bashing Reagan some more:
"President Ronald Reagan mentioned AIDS publicly for the first time Sept. 17, 1985, vowing in a news conference to make AIDS research a 'top priority.' Reagan's proposed budget for 1986 actually called for an 11 percent reduction in AIDS spending. By the end of 1986, there were 24,559 reported deaths." (Which is higher than all the Jews murdered by the Nazis?)
This is the stuff of nuttiness. It's bad enough that a magazine would publish this bile; it's unconscionable that a TV network produce a movie "based on real events" furthering it.
The real Reagan record on AIDS is different than the seemingly never-ending mud-slinging. His Department of Health and Human Services secretary called it a "top priority" in 1983, when the disease was so new that few people even understood what was happening. AIDS funding skyrocketed in the 1980s, almost doubling each year beginning in 1983 -- when the media started blaring headlines -- from $44 million to $103 million, $205 million, $508 million, $922 million and then $1.6 billion in 1988.
Now, try finding Walter Mondale "mentioning AIDS publicly" when he ran against Reagan in 1984. It didn't come up in the presidential debates. It's nowhere to be found in his 1984 convention speech. A Nexis search of the Washington Post and The New York Times in 1984 doesn't locate a Mondale quote on AIDS.
Does that mean he's "Adolf," too?
Kramer's enough of a lunatic that in 2011, he was recklessly blaming every president from Reagan to President Barack Obama for AIDS in a letter he passed out to people attending a revival of "The Normal Heart." It said: "Please know that beginning with Ronald Reagan (who would not say the word 'AIDS' publicly for seven years), every single president has said nothing and done nothing, or in the case of the current president, says the right things and then doesn't do them."
Those in the press giving oxygen to this character assassin deserve the highest possible condemnation.
In 2006, as The New York Times honored Kramer by putting him in a panel discussion on the 25th anniversary of the first Times article on AIDS, he distributed typically crazy remarks in advance, calling for "Nuremberg trials" to hold not only Reagan, but the owners and editors of -- how's this for gratitude? -- The New York Times to be tried like Nazi war criminals for the AIDS holocaust.
They remember none of this at the Times. A few days ago, reporter Patrick Healy honored him in an article titled "A Lion Still Roars, With Gratitude." Healy warmly recalled Kramer as "the most strident, scolding voice in New York City (in the world, really) on behalf of gay men infected with HIV" in the 1980s.
Healy actually portrayed Kramer as some sort of prophet. He reported that at a special screening for the HBO film at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York, the film's director, "Glee" creator Ryan Murphy, led "a thousand-member audience" in a standing ovation for Kramer. "Larry, before we begin this film, I only have one thing to say. You were right."
Kramer has been not only wrong, but factually unglued. But none of this apparently matters. One might argue that in the 1980s, when the death toll was climbing and the hopelessness was deepening, that Kramer's rants of "You're killing us" spurred action. But you can't be a newspaper or a movie channel that claims to care about facts and history (and civility), and refuse to acknowledge how deeply wrong Kramer was and continues to be, screaming that Reagan is worse than Hitler.
Ends don't justify means. But it's worse than that. This is pure hatred.
Cancel your cable, folks.
JoMa
I remember those times very well. A lot a gays became unhinged because the disease was so poorly understood and there was no effective treatment. So, they lashed out and blamed, naturally, Reagan and the government. In fact, funding for AIDS research was growing exponentially and some really smart people at NIH were working tirelessly to research the disease and develop treatments.
The effort paid off. But you will never convince the nutjobs like this that their loony tunes history is completely made up.
People should not be funding HBO, do not subscribe
Australia gay study, 2004, 9,000 sample of self-identified gay men:
50% had over 100 sex partners
15% had over 1,000 sex partners
I thought they all wanted to get married and be monogamous.
Of course he blamed Reagan cause the BUGGERIN had nuthin to do with it.
Australia is below average then. The American numbers are higher.
The amount of research that kicked off on the immune system was staggering. He said you could write a grant proposal, include AIDS and HIV, and it would be granted. The funding dried up eight years later with Pres. Bubba.
However, the understanding of our immune system advanced more in a decade than it did the previous hundred years. Simply because it was the first disease seen that targeted our immune system directly.
Gays are overly dramatic. Everything they hate is the worst thing ever.
Not good enough, he wanted it NOW, and bought it secretly from janitor who had access to the study medicine.
So he stupidly takes a bunch of it and almost dies.
He ends up finding some combo that kept him alive for a few years, but only after a bunch of trial and error.
Today, in the developed world being HIV+ is considered a chronic illness.
In fact I can't remember the last time I took care of an actual AIDS patient.
Must be 15 years at least.
Blaming Reagan for not finding an instant cure, or anybody else for that matter is sickening.
Hell, among gays, even they figured it had to be spread by their sexual practices by the early 80s.
Dude Kramer makes it sound like it's something bad
Before the AID’s Epidemic, anyone contracting and being treated for a Venereal Disease was reported to the local Health Department so the “source” of the transmission could be found and future Infections stopped.
As soon as it became abundantly clear that AID’s was Primarily a Gay Man’s Disease, the outcry for Privacy overcame the concern for Public Health.
The Gay Community’s denial of the problem over fears of being Outed (sic) or ostracized killed more Gay Men than the Left could ever try to pin on Reagan with their Lies.
How many Gay Men knew they were Infected, or suspected as much and continued their Multiple Sex Partner Lifestyle?
I think those numbers are per year. 1000 partners per year. 3 a day.
Yeah, that was Reagan’s fault, alright.
Yup. The San Francisco gay bathhouse lifestyle was the real killer.
HIV is the first pathogen in history to be granted civil rights.
I had a schoolmate that ended up in Texas that was a Surgical Nurse in the 80’s.
Both he and his nurse “partner” died horrific deaths from AIDS. No telling how many they infected before all of the precautions were enforced.
As long as I live, I’ll never forget that funeral. Try to imagine an open casket with a 30 something friend that looked like he was 100 and had been dead for 10 years.
I don’t get HBO, by choice.
Someone ought to be prosecuted for this ongoing libel.
Never had,and will never have,HBO.
.
In the early 80’s most sane i.e. non-left people knew that AIDS was almost entirely a male homosexual phenomenon. Simple usage of condoms would have prevented most deaths. Many homos then and now refused to use condoms. Not only were they responsible for killing themselves, they killed hundreds (thousands?) of innocent people like Arthur Ashe through their reckless, criminal behavior. I remember reading about a homosexual dentist in Florida who deliberately infected a number of his patients after he found out he was infected. Which is one big reason I have very little sympathy for homos.
Movie stars Jim Parsons - apparently Sheldon is culturally-clueless in real-life too.....
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