2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: How to explain this: Hillary Clinton praised a former president [View all]Bluenorthwest
(45,319 posts)" You see, I have AIDS. I could be an African American woman, a Latino man, a 10-year old boy or girl. AIDS has many faces. And AIDS knows no class or gender, race or religion, or sexual orientation. AIDS does not discriminate, but George Bush's White House does.
AIDS is a disease of the Reagan-Bush years. The first case was detected in 1981, but it took 40,000 deaths and seven years for Ronald Reagan to say the word "AIDS." It's five years later, 70,000 more dead and George Bush doesn't talk about AIDS, much less do anything about it....."
http://www.towleroad.com/2007/03/bob_hattoys_spe/
Full speech is a barn burner and heaps praise on Bill Clinton.....
Same Convention, Elizabeth Glaser, again Hillary present in the room:
"Today, I am here because it's a matter of life and death. Exactly -- Exactly four years ago my daughter died of AIDS. She did not survive the Reagan Administration. I am here because my son and I may not survive four more years of leaders who say they care, but do nothing.
I understand the sense of frustration and despair in our country, because I know firsthand about shouting for help and getting no answer. I went to Washington to tell Presidents Reagan and Bush that much, much more had to be done for AIDS research and care, and that children couldn't be forgotten. The first time, when nothing happened, I thought, "They just didn't hear me." The second time, when nothing happened, I thought, "Maybe I didn't shout loud enough." But now I realize they don't hear because they don't want to listen."
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/elizabethglaser1992dnc.htm
We should at least remember Hattoy and Glaser and the words they spoke, they are both of them passed on now and they gave us so much. To pretend they never existed in order to gloss up some Reagan myth is just not acceptable.