[Cicero]

As a matter of fact, I well remember that homosexuals whom I knew, many of them intelligent people, had a strange kind of knee-jerk reaction blaming Ronald Reagan for the AIDS epidemic.

The original guilty party, if anyone, seems to have been a Canadian airlines attendant who picked up AIDS outside the country and spread it across the U.S in a very short time by visiting bathhouses across the U.S. in an epic sexual spree. But Reagan got the blame.

[elbucko]

...had a strange kind of knee-jerk reaction blaming Ronald Reagan for the AIDS epidemic.

I noticed that phenomenon too. It's not unlike Nixon getting the blame for Vietnam rather than Lyndon Johnson. Aids began infecting gays in the US while Carter was president. The hysteria just had not begun until the 80's.