OUTRAGEOUS - Check out what Reagan's Press Sec. Said About AIDS

[liberalpragmatist]

Yes - it's from Andrew Sullivan, but I find a lot of what he writes to be reasonable, and while he's Conservative, he's no Freeper and has been sounding mighty fed-up with Bush and the neoCons.

***
www.andrewsullivan.com

From Andrew Sullivan:
REAGAN AND AIDS: Sorry to continue about this, but I just got sent the following transcript of a press conference by Larry Speakes, presidential spokesman, on October 15, 1982. It speaks for itself:

Q: Larry, does the President have any reaction to the announcement from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, that AIDS is now an epidemic and have over 600 cases?

MR. SPEAKES: What's AIDS?

Q: Over a third of them have died. It's known as "gay plague." (Laughter.) No, it is. I mean it's a pretty serious thing that one in every three people that get this have died. And I wondered if the President is aware of it?

MR. SPEAKES: I don't have it. Do you? (Laughter.)

Q: No, I don't.

MR. SPEAKES: You didn't answer my question.

Q: Well, I just wondered, does the President ...

MR. SPEAKES: How do you know? (Laughter.)

Q: In other words, the White House looks on this as a great joke?

MR. SPEAKES: No, I don't know anything about it, Lester.

Q: Does the President, does anyone in the White House know about this epidemic, Larry?

MR. SPEAKES: I don't think so. I don't think there's been any ...

Q: Nobody knows?

MR. SPEAKES: There has been no personal experience here, Lester.

Q: No, I mean, I thought you were keeping ...

MR. SPEAKES: I checked thoroughly with Dr. Ruge this morning and he's had no - (laughter) - no patients suffering from AIDS or whatever it is.

Q: The President doesn't have gay plague, is that what you're saying or what?

MR. SPEAKES: No, I didn't say that.

Q: Didn't say that?

MR. SPEAKES: I thought I heard you on the State Department over there. Why didn't you stay there? (Laughter.)

Q: Because I love you Larry, that's why (Laughter.)

MR. SPEAKES: Oh I see. Just don't put it in those terms, Lester. (Laughter.)

Q: Oh, I retract that.

MR. SPEAKES: I hope so.

Q: It's too late.

Nothing I could write could be more damning than this, could it?

[robnycny]

1. Reagan=murderer.

Silence=Death. May he burn in hell. eom

[Squeegee]

12. Karma is a bitch

Reagan suffered more than a decade with a disease that may one day be treatable with stem cells and cloning, but federal funding for these areas of research has been banned under the Bush Administration. Oh the irony.

[Joanne98]

2. Good catch. That's our Raygun.

Mean, cruel and cold-blooded.

[KamaAina]

3. Check out what Reagan himself said about AIDS

for at least his first six years in office...
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... that's right, nothing. Not a blessed thing. He never even uttered the A-word, not even after Rock Hudson died from it.

[GainesT1958]

4. As she often does...

Barbra Streisand said it all a few years back:

"I will never forgive my fellow actor, Ronald Reagan, for not once mentioning the acronym 'AIDS' while he was in the White House."

This spoke volumes to the hypocrisy he and his right-wing cronies had concerning basic respect for human life!:mad:

What's sad is that, today, Dub has even LESS respect for it.:-(

B-)

[Cocoa]

5. I wonder who was laughing

interesting to know who the reporter was, and which reporters were laughing.

I didn't really have an opinion of Larry Speakes before reading this, but now I detest him.

[playahata1]

9. Hunter S. Thompson, in GENERATION OF SWINE (1988),

describes Larry Speakes as "a mean, shallow-brained, pot-bellied yuppie from the bowels of Mississippi."

If anyone needs a really good perpsective of the Reagan years, from a news standpoint, GENERATION OF SWINE is a must-read.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

6. Reagan's legacy is death

period.

[AndyTiedye]

11. I have Always Wondered if AIDS was another MIHOP

funny how it showed up the first time we had an administration
so heatlessly ideological and fundamentalist that they
would actually regard such a disease as a good thing.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

13. it was DEFINATELY LIHOP - I will research MIHOP - it bears looking in to

Truly!

[redqueen]

7. Sick and sad

What can you say about that? The lack of compassion... the arrogance...

What horrible things can you say about the Grand Old Party that they haven't proven true a dozen times over?

Moral majority my ass. These people wouldn't know morals if Jesus himself came back to try to teach them.

:(

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

8. That's just seriously disturbing nt

[Rex]

10. 600 in the US (1984) contracted AIDS - 900,000 US by 2001.

Yet these coldblooded bastards laughed about it like AIDS was a joke! :mad: , Repukes like Larry Speakes are vermin.

[Unperson 309]

17. We Were In The Front Lines in 1984!

Hollywood, 1984... I worked with the gay community outreach to try to get the word out about condoms and safe sex. I watched my friends die one after the other...

The first thing I ever read about the disease was an article in the Advocate about GRIDS (Gay Related Immuno-Deficinecy Syndrome) as it was called then. At the time fewer than 100 cases had been diagnosed.
They called it the "Gay cancer" because of the prevalence of Kaposi's sarcoma lesions, a disorder formerly seen only in elderly Jewish men of Eastern European extraction.

I lost a teacher, a relative, MANY friends to the disease and as they fell one by one, we listened, waited for the Administration to say something... ANYTHING...

What was done in those first terrible years, when we were drowning in confusion and conflictiong stories, was done by the Gay community itself! First we feared bad drugs were the cause, then poppers (Amyl Nitrate)... I was not active, sexually or otherwise, in the community, but I had many friends who were and I remember the undercurrent of fear and uncertainty.

THAT is the memory I will carry of the Reagan years! Crushing indifference. I still have the little green ribbon and tiny chain that was a handout at the 1985 Gay Parades. The ribbon was for AIDS funding and the chain was for the indifference of the administtation and for the brave souls who chained themselves to the lampposts and doors of the San francisco Civic Plaza. They camped out there for several years, I recall. What did they want? One DAY's military budget given to AIDS research. It never happened and one by one, they died! Until the last tent was struck and the last protestor went to the hospital, never to return.

I could never pass that little grassy area where the tents had been without feeling betrayed by the government.

309

[newsguyatl]

14. it's repulsive

reagan's entire record is repulsive.


when i think of the neglect and the discrimination against the gay community under this punk, i get sick to my stomach.



his coffin should've been draped with the aids quilt to showcase his shame. that's the only way i wouldn't spit on it as i passed by.

[rumguy]

15. typical fuckin' repigs - joking at the expense of others

there is a ton of things the federal government can do in the face of an outbreak...

the federal government holds the purse strings for hundreds of millions of dollars in research grant money...

Ray-goon didn't even want AIDs on the radar screen...

:grr:

[Mandate My Ass]

16. Har de har har

Disease and slow death of people we don't approve of.
Money for research???? Surely you jest. :grr:

[David Zephyr]

18. Kick. This Should Be Sent to All Of the Fawning Media Whores.

Thanks, Liberalpragmatist.

[dsc]

19. Wow

I was only 14 back then so I had no memory of this particular statement. Damning isn't a strong enough word.