Sunday, March 13, 2016

Hillary's big failure

Frankly, I thought the gay community was admirable in its restraint during the official mourning period and funeral for former First Lady Nancy Reagan.   I don't recall seeing any negative public statements, during this mourning time, about the Reagans' abominable denial of the AIDS crisis back in the 1980s when he was president.

Thousands of young gay men were dying from this new virus that no one knew what to do about back then.   Yet the president and his wife acted as though it were nothing, of no concern of theirs.   Even though Nancy's good friend, Rock Hudson, was one of those who died early on.   President Reagan made no public statement about this "generation-defining tragedy" until 1985, after more than 5,000 had died.    His press secretary would laugh derisively and mock homosexuals when asked questions about it.

OK.  That's in the past.   We don't need to vent our long-held rage when a person has just died.   People admired Mrs. Reagan for other reasons.  And we tend to talk about the admirable things, when someone has just died.

But then Hillary -- egregiously and thoughtlessly -- just poured fuel on the suppressed fires in paying tribute to another former First Lady.  She made a statement that was not only false, but highly insulting to the gay community.   She praised Nancy Reagan for "starting a conversation" about HIV and AIDS back ". . . when nobody would talk about it, nobody wanted to do anything about it."    She then referred to Mrs. Reagan's "effective, low key advocacy" that "penetrated the pubic conscious and people began to say, 'Hey, we have to do something about this too.'"

An hour later, apparently someone told her this was completely misrepresenting the facts, so she tweeted out a brief, terse retraction:
"While the Reagans were strong advocates for stem cell research and finding a cure for Alzheimer's disease, I misspoke about their record on HID and AIDS.  For that, I'm sorry."
Not good, Hillary.   Your tin ear is showing.    I could forgive -- in the midst of a grueling presidential campaign and having to fly to California for the funeral -- that you might mix up one disease for another.   But your retraction needed a more empathic apology to the gay community and to the relatives and friends of those who died while enduring the scorn of their president and his wife. 

Ralph

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