Posted on 06/10/2004 5:37:15 PM PDT by fight_truth_decay
On Tuesday night CNN devoted a segment of Anderson Cooper 360 to how, as CNN's Dr, Sanjay Gupta put it, throughout his presidency "many would accuse President Reagan of ignoring AIDS," as if Reagan talking about it would have done more to prevent it than those in the homosexual community modifying their unsafe sex practices. Leading into a Reagan clip from 1987, Gupta complained that "the first time President Reagan would utter the word AIDS in public would be well into his second term, six years after the virus was discovered." In fact, Reagan talked about AIDS in 1985 and cited it repeatedly in his 1986 State of the Union address. Gupta relayed how one "AIDS activist" believes "the administration avoided AIDS all those years because of homophobia."
Interviewing Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health, Cooper pointed out how "the San Francisco Chronicle said that Ronald Reagan was guilty, and I quote, of a 'shameful abdication of leadership in the fight against AIDS.'" When Fauci wasn't sufficiently anti-Reagan, Cooper reminded him: "The criticism is that earlier on in 1981 or '82, they had been more vocal they might have made a difference. I think part of the anger, too, is that Reagan's communication director, Pat Buchanan, you know, was quoted as saying in print that AIDS is the wrath of God upon homosexuals."
Unmentioned by CNN, how, as Deroy Murdock conveyed on National Review Online: "In a Congressional Research Service study titled 'AIDS Funding for Federal Government Programs: FY1981-FY1999,' author Judith Johnson found that overall, the federal government spent $5.727 billion on AIDS under Ronald Reagan. This higher number reflects President Reagan's proposals as well as additional expenditures approved by Congress that he later signed."
For Murdock's piece, which quotes Reagan's comments about AIDS in 1985 and 1986, as well as how Patti Davis denied her father was any kind of homophobe: http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback/murdock200406081045.asp
(Cooper's segment on Reagan and AIDS aired the same night, MRC analyst Ken Shepherd noticed, that he devoted a story to the suddenly wise Nancy Reagan for opposing President Bush on stem cell research. He introduced that story: "Well, as President Bush remembers Ronald Reagan, he is also reminding America of his admiration of the Republican icon and of course, Reagan's wife Nancy, as well. But there is one sticky subject where the president and the wife of the former president part company, stem cell research. It is an anathema to many conservatives, but to a woman who just lost her beloved husband to Alzheimer's, it is a topic that transcends 'Raw Politics.'")
(Excerpt) Read more at mediaresearch.org ...
"According to the screenplay...my father is a homophobic Bible-thumper who loudly insisted that his son wasn't gay when Ron took up ballet, and who in a particularly scathing scene told my mother that AIDS patients deserved their fate," wrote Ronald and Nancy Reagan's daughter,Patti Davis, on Time magazine's website. "Not only did my father never say such a thing, he never would have."
In fact, she recalls "the clear, smooth, non-judgmental way" in which her dad discussed the topic of homosexuality with her when she was age eight or nine.
"My father and I were watching an old Rock Hudson and Doris Day movie. At the moment when Hudson and Doris Day kissed, I said to my father, "That looks weird."... All I knew was that something about this particular man and woman was, to me, strange. My father gently explained that Mr. Hudson didn't really have a lot of experience kissing women; in fact, he would much prefer to be kissing a man. This was said in the same tone that would be used if he had been telling me about people with different colored eyes, and I accepted without question that this whole kissing thing wasn't reserved just for men and women."
Fact: Reagan publicly demonstrated this outlook when he opposed Proposition 6, a 1978 ballot measure that called for the dismissal of California teachers who "advocated" homosexuality, even outside of schools. Reagan used both a September 24, 1978, statement and a syndicated newspaper column to campaign against the initiative.
Fact:Precise budget requests are difficult to calculate, as online records from the 1980s are spotty. Nevertheless, New York University's archived, hard copies of budget documents from fiscal year 1984 through FY 1989 show that Reagan proposed at least $2.79 billion for AIDS research, education, and treatment. In a Congressional Research Service study titled AIDS Funding for Federal Government Programs: FY1981-FY1999, author Judith Johnson found that overall, the federal government spent $5.727 billion on AIDS under Ronald Reagan. This higher number reflects President Reagan's proposals as well as additional expenditures approved by Congress that he later signed.
Table 5 of Johnson's report shows annual federal AIDS spending during Ronald Reagan's watch. This is hardly the portrait of a do-nothing presidency chart
Charges that Showtime recently depicted in the controversial TV film "The Reagans". Nothing more than left-wing lies about an American legend.
The first time President Clinton would utter the name "Juanita Broaddrick" in public was well into his second term, as I recall...
Gupta was probably dedicated to Khali as a child.
That (Reagan didn't stop Aids) whine was the same one most of the CSPAN negative callers use.
The Libs found out few know anything about Iran Contra, so that flopped as mud to sling.
The only other issue they could seem to find to sling some mud at President Reagan was that he didn't stop Aids.
I'd bet most 'callers' couldn't even carry on a real discussion about how many $$$ Reagan, Bush1, Clinton, Bush2 provided, etc., because it is just the talking point for them to spew if they got on air.
Why should ANYBODY care about AIDS more than those who are too self-indulgent to STOP the behavior that transmits it?
They're lambasting Reagan on AIDS because he didn't accept/embrace the gay agenda. Period.
I remember when AIDs first broke the public conciousness,
we were told over and over, it was a civil rights issue
NOT a health emergency.
Now they're sniveling.
Republicans wanted to curtail the actvities which spread AIDS; liberals opposed any action to curtail such activities. So the Republicans are at fault for the fact that the disease was spread by people participating in such activities?
What about those who prevented any action to clamp down on the bathhouses where the disease was spread?
AIDs was identified in the late 70's. Wouldn't that really make it Carter's fault?
It amazes me that it's become virtually a capital crime to even suggest that people behave themselves. We are a nation of toddlers who want what we want NOW with no restrictions or responsibilities, only rights.
<<<< crickets >>>>
Every president after Reagan has talked about AIDS and it has not made the problem a faint memory.....so what gives???????????
And here we are, some 20+ years later, and there still isn't a cure for AIDS, despite 8 wondrous years of Bill Clinton, despite billions of dollars spent by many countries to the detriment of research into the cure of other less "fashionable" diseases.
They do have a point, however; Reagan could have stopped AIDS in America by quarantining carriers early and shutting down businesses that promoted the spread of the disease, but we all know how that would have gone over. In the end, everyone knew that (a) the odds of getting AIDS if you lead a clean life were extremely small, and (b) if those that were at risk of getting AIDS wouldn't do anything to help themselves then there really wasn't a moral obligation to help them.
AIDS virus was not identified until 1982.
Having never participated in that 'scene' I can only conjecture, but something tells me that the promiscuity rates among bathhouse patrons were probably higher than among those who went home for their 'relationships'.
I also have a feeling that there were and are many 'homosexual activists' who wanted and still want AIDS to spread so they can portray homosexuals as 'victims'.
The homosexual lobby has fought tooth and nail every step of the way for the right to spread AIDS unfettered. They didn't really want anybody stopping it; they only wanted their treatment paid for with OPM.
I remember reading about it as the 'gay plague' in the early 80's when I had a subscription to Rolling Stone. A friend's husband who was a hemophiliac contracted it either from his meds or a blood transfusion in 83 or 84.
It still doesn't make it Reagan's fault, he wasn't the one spreading it and there's still not a cure.
Nancy Reagan chooses who will speak. This is not a political rally like Wellstone's service.
The rumor was also that Clinton was pissed off as this deflected interest of his book coming out. Again not verified at this time..only rumor.
One rather interesting facet of liberalism is that it imparts nobility to victimhood. If someone is harmed by something, one should be entitled to benefit from it; one should not try to mitigate harm, because reducing the harm one suffers would reduce the amount of 'relief' to which one was entitled.
The notion that it is better to have problems and blame someone else for them, than not to have the problems in the first place, seems bizarre, but it seems to have infected a lot of people in a lot of ways. I don't know what the best way to counter this infectious notion, but perhaps forcing it into the open will help.
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