Reagan Threw Him Under The Bus
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Agamemnon7 — 14 years ago(March 17, 2012 01:53 PM)
Rock Hudson was a Republican, too, and a fan and friend of the Reagans. According to their daughter, who has publicly disagreed with many of their positions, they had nothing against gays.
Reagan did, however, believe in a smaller government, so increasing funding for AIDS research was no higher (or lower) on his list than increasing money for anything else (except, sigh, the military).
Reagan spoke compassionately about Ryan White once he was out of the White House. I can't help but wish he had been more compassionate during his Presidency. He always spoke of America as the most progressive nation in the world. How much more progressive we would have been if we had acted faster to do something about this epidemic.
But I would not call him intentionally harmful. I do not think he understood the magnitude of the AIDS crisis until it had spiraled out of control.
The irony is that Nancy Reagan's father was a very accomplished surgeon and man of medicine.
I think it is something he would have handled differently in hindsight.
I'm not an apologist for him, I just think it's unrealistic to depict him as being that contemptuous of anyone. As conservative as he was, he worked far more cooperatively with a Democratic congress than any of his Republican successors, and certainly more so than Obama has worked with Republicans. -
dkgambler — 14 years ago(March 20, 2012 10:46 AM)
Notice also that I never got an answer to my simple question regarding what specifically Reagan should have done. Of course, it's much easier to simply spout ad hominem nonsense about Reagan that it is/was to get specific. To AIDS specifically, and in all likelihood contrary to prescribed culture, AIDS is almost exclusively restricted to gays and intravenous drug users. I would think/hope that the blood transfusion problem has gone away with improved procedures at hospitals, etc.. Magic Johnson, certainly with the help of the AIDS lobby, propelled forth the "anyone, including exclusive heterosexuals, can get AIDS." I have zero doubt that Magic Johnson is either gay or bisexual, the idea that he contracted HIV from random heterosexual contact is BS and his fable has misallocated countless millions of dollars of resources. But don't believe me, just look at the numbers when you go to find the proof of the coming heterosexual AIDS epidemic that we were warned about in 1991. It hasn't happened, not even close, and any suggestion that the warning of the so-called epidemic made everyone fly straight is of course equal BS as the original claim.
Why do I say all of this? Simple, it's absurd to automatically suggest government is the one to look to for a solution to the AIDS problem or any other problem for that matter. Such a belief is based on emotion and not logic, which is238 what lovers of big government (mostly leftists, but also a large number of incorrectly-named "conservatives") want. Logic rarely if ever dictates, hell look no further than the Komen/pink ribbon/breast cancer lobby. The presumed belief is that breast cancer efforts are the best way to focus efforts on saving women's lives. Truth is, breast cancer kills a pittance of women compared to heart disease. If saving lives is the goal, the Komen organization would waste no time shifting its priorities to heart disease. Again, that's if saving women's live5b4s is the goal. Am I suggesting that Komen's number one goal in fact is not saving women's lives? Yes. -
Kenneth-8 — 13 years ago(June 13, 2012 07:34 AM)
Wow, you're just as hateful as any of the so called intolerant Christian bigots you describe. By all accounts, including Hudson's own lover BTW, Reagan was upset about Hudson's illness and called him up in the hospital in Paris. He even offered him a chance to stay at the White House while he was sick. At a time when your open-minded liberal friends in Hollywood wouldn't even look at someone with AIDS in fear of getting it, Reagan offered an open hand to Hudson for support. SO yeah, he was a real hateful, spiteful man who just wanted people to dies of AIDS because they weren't Christian. ANd he did provide funding for AIDS research, but since it wasn't 30 billion dollars, he was a bigot I guess. This was 1985, and it was a still a mystery illness that wasn't on a mainstream level, what was he supposed to do, allot a third of his budget to finding a cure? ANd him not mentioning AIDS until 1987, so what? No one probably asked him about AIDS publicly so he never said anything. I mean, the guy could have been in shelters giving water to sick AIDS patients and you a-holes would still have something to complain about him. And BTW, the President who donated the most to AIDS research was, yep, a bigoted Christian President named George W. Bush. He started PEPFAR and donated billions to finding a cure; guess somehow you conveniently forgot about him.
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smjensen312-158-669840 — 13 years ago(June 15, 2012 09:29 PM)
The government of South Africa (where more than 30% of the population is HIV positive) was led by a man who doubted that HIV causes AIDS and espouses "alternate" theories. He was certainly approved of by most leftists, since it was a government led by the African National Congress. The fact that his ignorance costed lives (South Africa's population is actually declining, in large part due to AIDS deaths) is something that is not being criticized by the left.
There's no question that Reagan waited too long to publicly address AIDS. But was malice or callousness towards AIDS victims the primary reason for this? There were a lot of very ignorant attitudes that were rampant in the early 1980's- people who in one breath saw AIDS as "God's punishment to gays" and in the next breath theorized about transmission through casual contact. At least Reagan did not promote (or exploit) the hysteria. -
SnoozeAlarm — 13 years ago(June 16, 2012 03:08 PM)
People love to blame Reagan for not doing anything.
The biggest villains in the A16d0IDS epidemic were the homosexual community leaders who fought tooth-and-nail any efforts to close the bath-houses, all in the name of preserving the homosexual lifestyle, when that was the act that could have saved tens of thousands of homosexual lives.
http://tinyurl.com/cjsy86c -
puirt-a-beul — 11 years ago(December 22, 2014 08:03 AM)
People love to blame Reagan for not doing anything.
Sure, because that's what exactly what happened: he did nothing. Until Gallo stole the Pasteur Institute's research, and he and Heckler could make political mileage out of it, Reagan had never even mentioned the word AIDS in public.
The biggest villains in the AIDS epidemic were the homosexual community leaders who fought tooth-and-nail any efforts to close the bath-houses, all in the name of preserving the homosexual lifestyle, when that was the act that could have saved tens of thousands of homosexual lives.
Not quite. One of the tragic aspects of AIDS in Western countries was that it emerged just as the fight for civil rights for gay people was heating up; with no knowledge of transmission vectors, both the bath-house owners and the gay community itself saw attempts to shut down the bath-houses as an effort to shut down gay rights. In hindsight we can judge the choices as unwise, but you have to put them in the context of the knowledge and social dynamics of the time.
Of course, if Reagan and Heckler had responded to any of the dozens of alerts from the CDC and made the gathering information about the disease public, then the choices could have been better and *
that- could have saved thousands of lives. Plus it would have retarded the spread of the disease and kept it from becoming so entrenched before any treatments started to appear.
On the matter of Hudson, I don't believe Reagan's (in)actions were any more detrimental to him than to any other specific gay man. Reagan couldn't make Hudson a special case, and he could hardly say anything about Hudson that Hudson himself had not already disclosed. But since there's a lot of talk on this thread about personal responsibility, then Reagan too should be held responsible for his lack of leadership or diligence in the situation just because it didn't affect any sectors of the community he particularly cared about.
You might very well think that. I couldn't possibly comment.
- could have saved thousands of lives. Plus it would have retarded the spread of the disease and kept it from becoming so entrenched before any treatments started to appear.
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TheLightFantastic — 13 years ago(October 25, 2012 02:05 PM)
I had to do a paper for school recently about AIDS during the early days so I read quite a bit about it.
I don't think Reagan "threw Rock under a bus". Rock was already dying of the disease by the time Reagan found out. Rock kept his illness unknown for quite some time. While Reagan didn't publicly say anything about Rock's illness, he did call him and made sure he was getting the best treatment.
I think people need to remember that little was known about AIDS at the time and yes, it did (and still does) carry the stigma of a "bad person's disease". Even now some people think it's a punishment for being gay or being a drug addict. More enlightened people know that's not true.
Reagan could have done more but considering his limited knowledge on the subject and the fact that he was a politican and was attempting to please everyone (an impossible task), I can somewhat understand why he did so little. Understanding something does not mean I approve however.
That brings us back to Rock. He wasn't thrown under a bus by anyone. He lived his life and, sadly, made a fatal mistake that cost him his life. He didn't "deserve" to die a painful death because of he lived a lifestyle that some don't approve of. If we all died in accordance to how we live, there would be quite a few people who would be struck by lightening on a daily basis. -
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The_Tropics — 12 years ago(September 11, 2013 09:13 AM)
So funny how not one person takes in to consideration that Rock Hudson had open heart surgery and then blood transfusions somewhere from
1979 - 1981
in a hospital located in, wait for it,
SAN FANSCISCO
! Look at that time frame and look at what city it took place in.
Totally possible that he could have contracted it then.
Oh, and for all of those out there that actually believe Marc Christian, they weren't even in a romantic relationship the last 3 years of Rock Hudson's life.
All you need to do is pick up a copy of the biograph. It all comes out there.
Here's a treat for Rock Hudson fans:
http://therockhudhadsonproject.com/ -
TonTon — 3 years ago(June 15, 2022 11:49 AM)
Reagan did not mention AIDS until 1987. Reagan's own daughter said that there was no excuse for that, but that he was not homophobic. Reagan and Hudson were friends. Reagan knew Hudson was homosexual.
Glad to see all the bigoted christian conservatives show up. You all talk about "personal responsibility" only when something bad happens to people you don't like. You can quote the bible as much as you like, but it's just a shield that you hide behind to justify your bigotry.