Speaker 1: Mhm Hi everybody, I'm Robert Evans, and this is once
Speaker 1: again Behind the Bastards the Shore, where we tell you
Speaker 1: everything you don't know about the very worst people in
Speaker 1: all of history. Now, this is part two of our
Speaker 1: episode on the Reagans and the AIDS crisis. Uh And
Speaker 1: my guest with me as with on Tuesday is Andy
Speaker 1: Beckerman and a couple of therapy Hey, everyone, how you doing?
Speaker 1: How are you doing? And it's going on. I'm going
Speaker 1: so we're recording this right after the first episode. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try to get my energy back. If you listen
Speaker 1: to the first episode, you can if if you like,
Speaker 1: had a graph of my energy as we hear more
Speaker 1: and more about just how like I knew. Look, it's
Speaker 1: not like I didn't know that the Reagans were fucking awful, right,
Speaker 1: I knew about Look read manufacturing consent. Chomsky and Herman
Speaker 1: go all into like they're fucking Shenanigans in Central and
Speaker 1: South America. We all know about the Iran Contra scandal.
Speaker 1: We know about how they allowed crack into black communities
Speaker 1: in the United States that eventually then destroyed those communities.
Speaker 1: We know they're awful people, but to have like the
Speaker 1: nitty gritty right in front of you. It just like
Speaker 1: so the graph of my enthusiasm, and it goes from
Speaker 1: like making jokes to just like these motherfucker's yeah. And
Speaker 1: so it's it's like a downhill slope of our of
Speaker 1: of the emotional journey we all went through that first episode.
Speaker 1: But I'm gonna look, I'm gonna try to put out
Speaker 1: the energy for this one. This episode has a hero.
Speaker 1: So that's this episode has a hero. It does include
Speaker 1: a hero. Was there a Wolverine comic where he fought
Speaker 1: uh fought ray Well, he tried to fight the AIDS virus.
Speaker 1: It did not work out well, but he was he
Speaker 1: was attempting. It turns out, I don't know, he's got
Speaker 1: superhero you know, he heals. I don't want to go
Speaker 1: on this. This is not this is not a not
Speaker 1: a healing factor and a very special X Men issue
Speaker 1: about all this. I want Wolverine and like the was
Speaker 1: the crossover where all that they their fall other enemies
Speaker 1: like mcn fought Spider Man or something and Mandarin fought
Speaker 1: siloc It's shocking to me that we're still able to
Speaker 1: have cartoon villains called the Mandarin. Oh no, remarkable. No,
Speaker 1: I believe he's dead now so that they could have
Speaker 1: less racist characters. But wolverinverse Reagan, Hey, Marvel, get on that? Oh,
Speaker 1: maybe make that the next X Men? When now that
Speaker 1: the X Men are part of the Marvel universe, the
Speaker 1: Marvel Cinematic universe. So did that happen? Yes? When when
Speaker 1: Disney bought I'm behind on my Marvel news? Oh my, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right Disney did. Don't you read Deadline? Speaking of Fox,
Speaker 1: Fox in the Henhouse. Actually this does segue nicely into
Speaker 1: Fox because part of my due diligence for this podcast
Speaker 1: was reading several defenses of the Reagan administration's reaction to
Speaker 1: the AIDS crisis, And to be fair, I wanted to
Speaker 1: find the best defenses I could for their behavior. I
Speaker 1: found one such defense in a conservative journal called City Journal.
Speaker 1: It's a quarterly publication. Uh, and it claims that Reagan
Speaker 1: actually waged a quiet war on AIDS. That's the termam
Speaker 1: it uses, where he didn't talk about it or approved
Speaker 1: much additional funding. In fact, actually slashed most medical funding
Speaker 1: for research anything. But he was it was a quiet war.
Speaker 1: It was quiet. It was so quiet you might not
Speaker 1: have heard him say anything about it until nineteen people
Speaker 1: had died. Um. The article argues that the quietness is
Speaker 1: okay because his administration took action to reform FDA procedures
Speaker 1: that slowed down the development of better drugs. That's what
Speaker 1: it's saying. What's the source again, City Journal? If you're
Speaker 1: a conservative person, it's like it's a it's a I mean,
Speaker 1: I am sure assuming gets funding from a bunch of
Speaker 1: different Like one of the articles that I found on
Speaker 1: it was called the Democrats War on Science. So if
Speaker 1: you are a conservative, City Journal is a relatively reputable
Speaker 1: news source. If you're looking for right wing journals of
Speaker 1: pun the tree, what democrats are all Jews with horns. Well,
Speaker 1: it's not quite that bad. Um. I'm going to read
Speaker 1: a quote from it, trying to make the claim that
Speaker 1: f d A reformed during the Reagan administration helped against
Speaker 1: the age crisis. As the gravity of the AIDS threat
Speaker 1: became clear, the Reagan FDA began writing new rules that
Speaker 1: spelled out when't significant parts of the old rules wouldn't
Speaker 1: be fully rigorously enforced. By doing so, the agency accelerated
Speaker 1: patient access to desperately needed drugs. Pharmaceutical companies quickly began
Speaker 1: coming on board once new policies were in place that
Speaker 1: would speed up the approval of drugs. In short order,
Speaker 1: the firms delivered a slew of powerful new drugs using
Speaker 1: the new tools for designing precisely targeted drugs that were
Speaker 1: coming of age at the time. As a National Academy
Speaker 1: of Sciences later noted, the extraordinarily fast development of drugs
Speaker 1: that ended up in cocktails now used to control HIV
Speaker 1: had a quote revolutionary effect on modern drug design. Part
Speaker 1: of this is true, uh, the research that was done
Speaker 1: in the meta, like the the fight in order to
Speaker 1: make effective medicine for age was a revolutionary moment in
Speaker 1: the development of pharmaceuticals. What's really debatable is how much
Speaker 1: Reagan's reforms of the FDA had to do with any
Speaker 1: of this. Um Now, you can make an argument that
Speaker 1: some of those reforms might have sped up the process.
Speaker 1: There are certainly things that were done that made it
Speaker 1: easier for people to get medicines that weren't officially FDA approved,
Speaker 1: like rock Hudson had to travel to France. Could make
Speaker 1: that argument. A lot of people would laugh at you
Speaker 1: for trying to but you could make that argument important
Speaker 1: to be fair, um, but it is tough to make
Speaker 1: a evidence base case that the Reagan administration improved the
Speaker 1: FDA because they actually gutted it and slashed its funding.
Speaker 1: And this is the fun part of being fair because
Speaker 1: now that I have gone into this is again the
Speaker 1: best argument I found about how the Reagan administration took action,
Speaker 1: and it is you can back it up with strong
Speaker 1: facts that changes that were made to FDA procedures during
Speaker 1: the Reagan administration helped certain aspects of things that people suffering.
Speaker 1: Like that's what It made it easier to get drugs
Speaker 1: that you know hadn't been fully approved yet for a
Speaker 1: disease that was working at a dang. That's a that's
Speaker 1: a legitimate achievement of that era. Debatable as to whether
Speaker 1: or not you want to put it on Reagan or someone,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a thing that was done that helped
Speaker 1: some people. Yeah, but they also introduced a bill that
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen one's penis in a changing room
Speaker 1: like at the gym, then you no longer have access
Speaker 1: to healthcare. So well, here's what they actually did, because
Speaker 1: it's really fucked up too, So that this is why
Speaker 1: this is the fun part of being fair because once
Speaker 1: you dig into these things, like I I read it
Speaker 1: up and it's like, okay, yeah, there are some reforms
Speaker 1: of the FDA that we're made that improved access to
Speaker 1: certain drugs. Here's what else happened. Uh So, Reagan's priority.
Speaker 1: One of the big things they did when they started
Speaker 1: slashing funding the FDA to try to streamline it. Their
Speaker 1: goal was to make the FDA a better quote partner
Speaker 1: for the pharmaceutical industry. That did speed some things up,
Speaker 1: but it also got lots of people killed. Here's the
Speaker 1: New York Times uh an interview with a doctor named
Speaker 1: Sydney Wolf from the World Health Research Group. In October
Speaker 1: nine one, a federal government advisory committee recommended against the
Speaker 1: use of aspirint for chicken pox or flu because of
Speaker 1: the increased risks risk of raise syndrome. But as a
Speaker 1: result of pressure on the aspirin systry raise syndrome, who's ray.
Speaker 1: It's a disease that causes like brain damage and can
Speaker 1: kill kids. I think the taking aspirin as basically the
Speaker 1: Federal government advisory committee was like the current medical advice
Speaker 1: that the pharmaceutical industry really really supports is give your
Speaker 1: kid aspirin if they have chicken poxes. I remember commercials
Speaker 1: when I was a kid. Yeah, And so the pharmaceutical
Speaker 1: industry obviously once anything, it gets people taking more aspirin um.
Speaker 1: And but then there was evidence that this is actually
Speaker 1: bad for kids and main fact have been killing them.
Speaker 1: But quote as a result of pressure of the aspirin industry,
Speaker 1: at proposal by the FDA from mandatory warning labels with
Speaker 1: was withdrawn in the fall of Nino. As a result,
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty American children are dead and doesn't
Speaker 1: have brain damage. So cutting back on f d a
Speaker 1: red tape cuts both ways, and in this case it
Speaker 1: cut a hundred and fifty kids to death. Anyway, that's
Speaker 1: what fairness looks like. That's not a ton, it's only
Speaker 1: and dozens of kids with brain damage not that bad, really,
Speaker 1: less than two hundred total. Probably, if you're going to
Speaker 1: make it easier for people to get experimental medicines, some
Speaker 1: children are going to die from bad or from aspirin.
Speaker 1: That's just sure. Yeah, I mean, look in comparison with
Speaker 1: how many people the Reagan administration murdered in Central and
Speaker 1: South America, that's nothing. You know what. You know what.
Speaker 1: It's perspective, guys. It's perspective. It's perspective exactly. Um. And
Speaker 1: now we have some perspective. I just thought we delve
Speaker 1: into the other cases here, you know, you know, the
Speaker 1: defenses of the administration. This is what I was talking about,
Speaker 1: like part one where I was like, once the pharmaceutical
Speaker 1: industry smelled a profit to be made, is that when
Speaker 1: things started to pick up, like, oh, let's address this now,
Speaker 1: I guess not not not in the period we're getting into.
Speaker 1: That's like they get better at it later on. But again,
Speaker 1: most of the first medicines to treat AIDS did not
Speaker 1: fucking work. And we're going to talk to them about
Speaker 1: that in a little bit here. So um. According to
Speaker 1: City Journal, another aspect of Ronald Reagan's so secret it
Speaker 1: looked invisible war on AIDS was his appointment of See
Speaker 1: Everett Coop as Surgeon General. Uh and Mr Coop is
Speaker 1: a hero of this story, and he was appointed by
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan. But Ronald Reagan and his Surgeony General did
Speaker 1: not exactly see I to eye and looked like the
Speaker 1: colonel from KFC. Yeah, we're about to pull up his picture.
Speaker 1: He looked amazing. He's he's I'm gonna go ahead and say,
Speaker 1: probably the best aesthetic if any surgeon general we've ever had.
Speaker 1: And he does look like I would trust his recommendation
Speaker 1: on where by fried Chicken? If se Everett Coope was
Speaker 1: to tell me, now, Son, this place has a damn
Speaker 1: good bucket of fried bud here, I'd be like, you
Speaker 1: look like the kind of man who knows where good
Speaker 1: fried chicken is. My true Vada recipes got seven secret
Speaker 1: herbs and spasses in it, the best, I mean, whatever,
Speaker 1: the well, I guess I'll trust you. Kooby really getting
Speaker 1: a lot of play out of the Reagan voice jokes.
Speaker 1: That's that's if I was. If I was a journalist,
Speaker 1: Poop on Coop he used to say poop is sco
Speaker 1: because it was funny. Look at this guy, Look at
Speaker 1: this guy. That's what a fucking champion. That is truly
Speaker 1: a courageous chin beard. And this picture will be on
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards dot com if you want to see.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go ahead and say the best chin beard
Speaker 1: any surgeon general has ever had. I think that's probably fair.
Speaker 1: Texas on who send us a message on Twitter if
Speaker 1: you find a better surgeon general with a twin. If
Speaker 1: you get a name a surgeon general that's ever Coop.
Speaker 1: That's also fair. He is the only surgeon general whose
Speaker 1: name I knew before I started on this podcast, So
Speaker 1: that's a fair point. So Charles Everett Coop was called
Speaker 1: chick by his friends in Dartmouth College because chickens living
Speaker 1: comedy didn't wasn't really very advanced back then. What years
Speaker 1: this This is like in the forties something like that,
Speaker 1: and they get back into the yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Lenny Bruce was just a gleam and fatty Arbuckle's eye.
Speaker 1: I don't know much about the evolution of comedy. Um,
Speaker 1: so yeah. Cooper was a born again Christian um In
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six, he published The Right to Live the
Speaker 1: Right to Die, which argued against both abortion and euthanasia.
Speaker 1: The books sold a hundred thous copies, mostly to Christian
Speaker 1: readers in its first year. Coop said, quote, what a scam?
Speaker 1: How many? How how many grifters are there in like
Speaker 1: the Christian community. He's not a grifter. I will say
Speaker 1: this for Coop. He believes strongly everything, And I think
Speaker 1: you might come around on this, but He's definitely not
Speaker 1: you would think in any sort of reasonable corner right now,
Speaker 1: but he believes this stuff. Look I love the beard,
Speaker 1: love his aesthetic. All right, I'm already like there. Well see,
Speaker 1: Ivert Coop wrote this book about you know how as
Speaker 1: a physician and a Christian, he didn't believe abortion should
Speaker 1: be legal or or euthanasian. In fact, he viewed them
Speaker 1: as basically the same thing. That said He was also
Speaker 1: had a brilliant career as a surgeon and a children's
Speaker 1: hospital in Philadelphia, and he established the United states is
Speaker 1: first neal natal unit in nineteen fifty six, work there
Speaker 1: until nineteen So he was a guy with very strong,
Speaker 1: very right wing religious conservative views. But he was also
Speaker 1: a guy who clearly viewed his north star as taking
Speaker 1: care of human beings and that was the thing that
Speaker 1: was his main focus in life. And how did that
Speaker 1: lash with his Christian beliefs. Well, we're about to get
Speaker 1: into that, um so Coop. When he was appointed, many Democrats,
Speaker 1: including Henry Waxman, spoke out against Coop. Waxman said, quote,
Speaker 1: Dr Coope frightens me. He does not have a public
Speaker 1: health record. He's dogmatically denounced those who disagree with him,
Speaker 1: and his intemperate views make me wonder about his and
Speaker 1: the administration's judgment. Uh. Here's a quote from the book
Speaker 1: after the Wrath of God, titled doctor Unqualified, The New
Speaker 1: York Times editorial board latted Coop's work as a pediatric surgeon,
Speaker 1: but underscored his lack of public health experience. Pass surge
Speaker 1: in generals almost without exception. The article continued, have possessed experience,
Speaker 1: specifically within the field of public health. That Coop had
Speaker 1: shown no evidence of such experience, along with the fact
Speaker 1: that he technically was older than the legally permitted age
Speaker 1: to assume the position suggested that the Reagan administration's interest
Speaker 1: in Coop had been had to be found elsewhere. Quote
Speaker 1: that elsewhere maybe his anti abortion crusade. The Times concluded
Speaker 1: with its hope that Congress would reject the appointment. For
Speaker 1: not to do so would quote be an affront to
Speaker 1: both the public health profession and the public. So again,
Speaker 1: the start of this seems like Coop is the perfect
Speaker 1: guy to not make a fussbile tens of thousands of
Speaker 1: gay people die, right. It seems like the worst case
Speaker 1: scenario for a surgeon general and an already conservative administration.
Speaker 1: So he's like, who is the guy that's on the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court that they thought was a conservative but then
Speaker 1: it's actually more moderate Kennedy. Yeah yeah, yeah, So he's
Speaker 1: like that, like that, They're like, this guy is gonna hate,
Speaker 1: he's gonna hate all the right people was making this
Speaker 1: Surgeon General. Um. But no, in fact, that's actually not
Speaker 1: what happened. UH. Coop monitored CDC reports UH in their
Speaker 1: sponsor public health services from the sidelines during the first
Speaker 1: several years of the AIDS crisis. UH. Despite his his
Speaker 1: job was essentially to a form inform the American people
Speaker 1: about disease, about what was happening UH, and so he
Speaker 1: wanted to make a statement earlier in the AIDS crisis
Speaker 1: once he was conformed confirmed in nineteen eighty two, But
Speaker 1: he says he was quote completely cut off from AIDS
Speaker 1: by other people in the administration. He blames interdepartmental politics
Speaker 1: from blocking him from any of the few conversations that
Speaker 1: the Reagan administration had about as during the early nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: According to Coop, the reason for this was that his
Speaker 1: involvement would have implicated the Reagan administration in basically caring
Speaker 1: about gay people. Coop says that because AIDS was seen
Speaker 1: as a gay disease, the President's advisors quote took the
Speaker 1: stand they are only getting what they justly deserve. Now.
Speaker 1: Assistant Secretary for Health Edward Brandt, Coope's boss, told him
Speaker 1: that he was not allowed to speak publicly about AIDS
Speaker 1: during the epidemic. In nineteen eighty three, when Brandt created
Speaker 1: an executive task force on AIDS, Coop was not invited.
Speaker 1: By nineteen eighty five, he'd started to get pissed about this.
Speaker 1: Coop thought it was outrageous that thousands of people had
Speaker 1: died and the Surgeon General had said nothing. Now there
Speaker 1: were people agitating that Coop should be allowed to talk
Speaker 1: about the AIDS crisis. They were conservative Christians who sent
Speaker 1: anonymous telegrams to the Health and Human Services Secretary asking
Speaker 1: that Coope be quote unmuzzled because they thought he was
Speaker 1: going to speak out against protecting gay civil rights. They
Speaker 1: expected him to endorse the kind of anti gay public
Speaker 1: health measures like shutting down bathhouses that other Reagan administration
Speaker 1: officials endorsed. Finally, in nineteen eighty five, Coop was made
Speaker 1: a member of the AIDS task Force. In that winter,
Speaker 1: he was ordered to prepare a report on the AIDS epidemic.
Speaker 1: Coop knew from the start that he was was going
Speaker 1: to be a hard to write an unbiased report about AIDS.
Speaker 1: He recalled in his autobiography quote, A large proportion of
Speaker 1: the President's constituency was anti homosexual, anti drug abuse, anti promesecuity,
Speaker 1: and anti sex education. These people would not respond well
Speaker 1: to some of the things that have to be said
Speaker 1: in a health report on AIDS. So Coop is realizes immediately,
Speaker 1: if I'm going to address to AIDS, I have to
Speaker 1: talk about condoms. I have to talk about the ways
Speaker 1: in which gay people are having sex that makes it
Speaker 1: more likely for this to spread. I have to talk
Speaker 1: about sexual health to the entire American people, which is
Speaker 1: basically the kryptonite of a Republican in the nineteen eighties, nineties.
Speaker 1: It's not not not an easy cell today, Coop. I
Speaker 1: gotta talk about condoms, about to talk about biscuits, you
Speaker 1: gotta talk about mash taters and gravy. I gotta talk
Speaker 1: about sex. And it's weird that this is the guy
Speaker 1: who realizes I have instruct America about safe sex. But
Speaker 1: this is the guy who realized that he had to
Speaker 1: instruct America about safe sex. And that's exactly what he did.
Speaker 1: That's the that maybe like the last time that a
Speaker 1: Republican was overwhelmed by the feeling that this that this
Speaker 1: is going to spiral out of control if we don't
Speaker 1: address it. Yeah, and did something, and did something, and
Speaker 1: did something, and Coop fucking did something. Um. On October
Speaker 1: twenty two, ninety six, with more than sixteen thousand Americans
Speaker 1: dead from AIDS, Surgeon General see Everett Coop released the
Speaker 1: Surgeon General's Report on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Here's a
Speaker 1: description of it from After the Wrath of God. It
Speaker 1: presented the best medical information available to date about HIV
Speaker 1: and AIDS and sought to alleviate the fears of the
Speaker 1: American people. The thirty six page report called Americans to
Speaker 1: fight the epidemic as a unified group, rather than condemning
Speaker 1: certain populations disproportionately affected by the disease, who some felt
Speaker 1: deserved the illness US By saying this coup attempted to
Speaker 1: move the rhetoric of the AIDS epidemic beyond its association
Speaker 1: with homosexuality and drug use away from the idea that
Speaker 1: it was the just desserts for a moral behavior. As
Speaker 1: he noted, we're fighting a disease, not people. Could you
Speaker 1: imagine at at any time in your life thinking of
Speaker 1: population just deserves something for Yes, I mean, look, I
Speaker 1: I think, uh, that sociopath deserve to be excommunicated from
Speaker 1: civil society. I thought that's because they have proven themselves
Speaker 1: to be destructive to the general social fabric. I think
Speaker 1: the behavior Coup is fighting against is the behavior you
Speaker 1: see on every side of the island different things. Right now,
Speaker 1: among the left, there is a strong chunk of the
Speaker 1: American left that believes but char al Assad is a
Speaker 1: basically good guy. The gassings of his people are part
Speaker 1: of a propaganda campaign. Sorry, who on the left believes
Speaker 1: that he's a good guy talking to me about the
Speaker 1: red Rose avatar on Twitter and talk about the gassing
Speaker 1: of people, Like I've met some of these people, Like
Speaker 1: there's like tankis in the United Kingdom, which, like the
Speaker 1: term started because the Soviet Union essentially invaded like countries
Speaker 1: and its dominion who are trying to like agitate for
Speaker 1: more independence and civil rights outside of the USSR, and
Speaker 1: so like these British socialists were like, no, it's good
Speaker 1: that the USSR is crushing resistance with tanks and those people.
Speaker 1: There's a strong strain of that in the left who
Speaker 1: believes that Bashar al Assad, like the campaign against him
Speaker 1: is part of like a NATO conspiracy to try to
Speaker 1: ouse this guy to get serious oil. There's also the
Speaker 1: same thing with Ukraine where people will write off the
Speaker 1: Maidan revolution in Ukraine is they're all neo Nazis. Their
Speaker 1: neo Nazis fighting against the Russians there, and the Ukrainian
Speaker 1: government is a Nazi government because there are neo Nazis
Speaker 1: in Ukraine. Like it's it is. It is very easy
Speaker 1: for people on and it's the same thing you see
Speaker 1: on the right with like, well, everybody in fucking Iran
Speaker 1: is a religious extremist who hates America or whatever. Everybody
Speaker 1: finds it easy when you're separated enough from a group
Speaker 1: of people that have complex interests, some of which run
Speaker 1: counted to your own. Anybody can be convinced to condemn
Speaker 1: a group of people. It just depends on how far
Speaker 1: away they are. But like I'm saying, let's condemn people
Speaker 1: who don't have empathy for others. I think that would
Speaker 1: be great. Um, but they will give them Gults culture,
Speaker 1: will give them an island of their own. So if
Speaker 1: you don't have empathy, look, I'm saying, we create a
Speaker 1: test and then for people who to see whether they
Speaker 1: have empathy or not. And then if you don't, then
Speaker 1: we put you on a little island and you get
Speaker 1: to live the rest of your life there. You can
Speaker 1: do what you want. We call it Gults culture, and
Speaker 1: they'll all be like, you know, they'll all they'll all
Speaker 1: be erect from living in their iron rams. I thought
Speaker 1: you're describing New Hampshire. But no guns. They don't get guns,
Speaker 1: So it's not like they're not gonna be happy. They're
Speaker 1: not gonna be happy with that. Or maybe maybe guns
Speaker 1: with blanks. Yeah, that might do the trick. I mean
Speaker 1: like West World. But yeah, so Coope is doing the
Speaker 1: right thing here. Uh that's hanging with Dr Coop. Hanging
Speaker 1: with Dr Coop that surprisingly woke Dr Coop. Uh everything
Speaker 1: else about his life. Yeah, there you go. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna get into some more things Coop proposed, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna get into the right wing backlash against his idea
Speaker 1: of talking about the concept of condoms. Uh, and how
Speaker 1: controversial that wound up being. But first, ads and we're back.
Speaker 1: We're back, and we're talking about see Everett Coop. He's
Speaker 1: just released his nineteen eighties six report on AIDS. Coop's
Speaker 1: report opposed mandatory HIV testing and quarantines for those infected.
Speaker 1: He said that it wouldn't work. Both of those were ideas,
Speaker 1: though that conservative politicians close to the Reagan administration had suggested.
Speaker 1: Coop did more than just shoot down some of the
Speaker 1: GOP's favorite gut reactions to the crisis. He also called
Speaker 1: for a nationwide sex ed campaign that would teach, among
Speaker 1: the things, how to use condoms. He advised that this
Speaker 1: education should start at the lowest grade possible and be
Speaker 1: worked into normal health and hygiene education. Quote, there is
Speaker 1: no doubt now that we need sex ed in schools
Speaker 1: and that it include information on heterosexual and homosexual relationships.
Speaker 1: The threat of age should be sufficient to permit a
Speaker 1: sex education curriculum with a heavy emphasis on prevention of
Speaker 1: AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. From first grade on,
Speaker 1: I got economy day in school. Wow, that's a weird
Speaker 1: that's a weird school that might be too many condoms
Speaker 1: for a first grader. I don't know. I had a
Speaker 1: lot of good water balloon fights. He you save them
Speaker 1: up if if you saved up enough, you could trade
Speaker 1: them in for prizes. You get five condoms for one
Speaker 1: dental dam or something you get well, no, you can
Speaker 1: get like baseball cards or Marvel cards. At the time.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say it again, that's a weird school. Anyway.
Speaker 1: The point is I have a lot of expen cards,
Speaker 1: not a lot of condoms. No, well, that's a shame.
Speaker 1: They get better with age, That's what I've heard. Vintage condoms.
Speaker 1: I get all my condoms on eBay, and you know,
Speaker 1: make sure that they're from Ah. Well, it's just gonna
Speaker 1: move fastest bit so. In his report, Coop commented on
Speaker 1: drug use as well as oral and anal sex, because
Speaker 1: those were all major wads that AIDS was being spread.
Speaker 1: He talked about these things like a doctor without judgment,
Speaker 1: because that's exactly what he was, a doctor. Everybody lost
Speaker 1: their goddamn minds the l a times he would expect
Speaker 1: to have a reasonable take on the matter. Headline their
Speaker 1: coverage of the report, Coop urges AIDS sex course in
Speaker 1: grade school Hey, the l a time. Look it worked
Speaker 1: in migrade school. Uh. William F. Buckley Jr. A famous
Speaker 1: conservative pundit, attacked the surgeon General general piece of ship,
Speaker 1: general piece of ship, and specific piece of ship attacked
Speaker 1: the Surgeon General for suggesting American kids learn about sex.
Speaker 1: Robert Novak Roland Evans, another notable conservative of thinkers, wrote
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of lies about the Surgeon General's report
Speaker 1: and basically accused him of wanting to groom children for pedophilia. Uh.
Speaker 1: Philis Shafelely, right wing religious firebrand, opponent of the Equal
Speaker 1: Rights Amendment. And if you've watched Handmaiden's Tale, the commander's
Speaker 1: wife in the Handmaiden's Tale was specifically based on Philis
Speaker 1: Shafeley when the book was written, Uh, yeah, this lady Wind.
Speaker 1: Then the fly was based on the the just Jeff
Speaker 1: go before the train change was based on Philish. The
Speaker 1: fly the fly itself, the actual fly before the change,
Speaker 1: So not Jeff. The concept of a fly was based
Speaker 1: like bottom feeding vermin. Yeah. So Phillis said that aids
Speaker 1: that the AIDS report quote looks in reads like it
Speaker 1: was edited by the Gay task Force. She accused Surgeon
Speaker 1: General Coop of suggesting that third graders learned quote safe sodomy. Uh,
Speaker 1: said Coope, Why anyone paid attention to this lady is
Speaker 1: one of the mysteries of the eighties. I'm not the
Speaker 1: surgeon general to make Philish Shafely happy. I'm the surgeon
Speaker 1: general to save lives. Again. He's fucking he's he seized
Speaker 1: his moment to be the one guy not fucking up.
Speaker 1: Coop had been prepared to be attacked by the political
Speaker 1: right because he'd known that his report was going to
Speaker 1: reject all of the suggestions they had already made, but
Speaker 1: he later wrote that he did quote feel a profound
Speaker 1: sense of betrayal by those on the religious right who
Speaker 1: took me to task. My position on AIDS was dictated
Speaker 1: by scientific integrity and Christian compassion. I felt my Christian
Speaker 1: opponents had abandoned not only their old friend, but also
Speaker 1: their commitment to integrity and compassion. So I was talking
Speaker 1: about part yeah, yeah, Cooper compassion. Yeah. And then that's Coop.
Speaker 1: How Coop trans He does not like people that people
Speaker 1: are having gay sex. He thinks it's not what God wants,
Speaker 1: but he thinks they're also still people who deserve medical care.
Speaker 1: These dumb turds think they know what God wants. By
Speaker 1: the way, this I mean, look, I don't believe in God,
Speaker 1: but like supposedly this be unable force, unable force that
Speaker 1: created all all things and and some turd you know
Speaker 1: in a frock is just like I can translate, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this creature. By the way, I'm gonna get a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of hate mail for calling got a creature.
Speaker 1: Coop clearly takes the right thing out of religion, which
Speaker 1: is that like, oh, you should take care of people. Yeah, yeah, which, okay,
Speaker 1: that's a great thing. Yeah. Uh So. For an example
Speaker 1: of the Christian rights reaction to Coop's report, we have
Speaker 1: AIDS a special report almost the same title as Coop's report,
Speaker 1: but this didn't come from the government. It was released
Speaker 1: by Summit Ministries and also published in nine. It's appendix
Speaker 1: was titled AIDS Warning the Surgeon General's report maybe hazardous
Speaker 1: to your health. In one section, Coop chickens out. It
Speaker 1: claims the Surgeon General's pro homosexual bias was causing him
Speaker 1: to ignore the health risks of sexual immorality. They called
Speaker 1: his report quote littered with unscientific aegedly authoritative statements about
Speaker 1: the disease, most most of which let gays off the hook.
Speaker 1: So Christian right, everybody really nailing it. Uh. This report
Speaker 1: had suggestions for America to quote our public health authorities
Speaker 1: must be made to realize that their first responsibility is
Speaker 1: to protect the public's health, not the perceived civil rights
Speaker 1: of homosexuals or drug users. You're really you're always the
Speaker 1: bad guy if you're including civil rights and quotes the way.
Speaker 1: I love their other report about how communion wafers can
Speaker 1: give you six pack abs. Well, you know, actually they
Speaker 1: are pretty low. They're gloen free. Now it's a good snack.
Speaker 1: I would actually totally buy a big old bag of
Speaker 1: communion wafers. I enjoyed eating those as a kid. Are
Speaker 1: they I'm Jewish, so I've never even had one, But
Speaker 1: do they have any taste of them? They just nice
Speaker 1: little they're they're like little um okay, you know Nila wafers.
Speaker 1: You know they're made of that weird phoonia substance if
Speaker 1: that had no sugar in it and was tiny. It's
Speaker 1: a little bit like that. So it sounds like it's uh,
Speaker 1: styrofoam a little bit. But I like styrofoam. But like,
Speaker 1: why not look body of Christ? But also what about
Speaker 1: like could the hair of Christ be like cinnamon and sugar?
Speaker 1: When I imagine the taste of Jesus Christ's hot, glistening body,
Speaker 1: I imagine the taste of cool ranch de Rito's, because
Speaker 1: there's nothing like that nice de rito bite to make
Speaker 1: you realize that, maybe, just maybe there might be someone
Speaker 1: out there looking out for us, reading copy from from
Speaker 1: a piece of papers. No, that was all extemporaneous. I
Speaker 1: just anyway, let's move on to aids Um that was
Speaker 1: a bad, bad segue. Uh so, as hard as I
Speaker 1: hope it is to believe right now, but probably not
Speaker 1: at all hard to believe right now. Most of the
Speaker 1: outrage against Coope had come from his decision to endorse condoms.
Speaker 1: Quote from one of Reagan's advisers, Gary Bower, the White
Speaker 1: House doesn't like the sea word, but if you or sorry,
Speaker 1: this is a quote from women. So Coop said, sorry
Speaker 1: that every racist in this is a Southern or misogynist
Speaker 1: as a Southern person, apologies to progressive Southern people, thank
Speaker 1: you now. Coop said at the time, the White House
Speaker 1: doesn't like the C word, but if you don't talk
Speaker 1: about condoms. People are going to die, so I talk.
Speaker 1: Another Christian Conservative who didn't like Coop was Under Secretary
Speaker 1: of Education Gary Bauer. He was a Baptist and a
Speaker 1: bit of a stickler for the word values. Uh. Here's
Speaker 1: a picture of Bower with Ronald Reagan, just to get
Speaker 1: a picture of this guy in your head before I
Speaker 1: tell you what's next. He's a little weasily looking ship.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he looks like a Teminaric character. He does
Speaker 1: look like a temin Eric character. And he's wearing a
Speaker 1: suit that's clearly too big for him, which is like
Speaker 1: my favorite type of conservative. Yeah. I like how a
Speaker 1: guy in government couldn't go to a tailor, didn't have
Speaker 1: time to stop by Brooks Brothers. No, no, no, he
Speaker 1: had he had too much. Well, we're about to hear
Speaker 1: what he was doing when he wasn't getting a suit fitted. Uh.
Speaker 1: Gary is currently the president of American Values and Advocacy
Speaker 1: group that lobbies for exactly the kind of things you'd think. Uh.
Speaker 1: In December of x he wrote up the education policy
Speaker 1: that would actually teach American school kids about eads, rather
Speaker 1: than following a need of guidelines Coup had laid down.
Speaker 1: He believed the Department of Education should quote not be
Speaker 1: neutral between heterosexual and homosexual sex, while homosexual should not
Speaker 1: be persecuted. Heterosexual sex within marriage is what most Americans
Speaker 1: are laws and our traditions consider the proper focus of
Speaker 1: human sexuality. Bauer believed that all federally mandated are federally
Speaker 1: sponsored AIDS education supplements should quote encourage responsible sexual behavior
Speaker 1: based on fidelity, commitment, and maturity, placing sexuality within the
Speaker 1: context of marriage, which of course means you don't have
Speaker 1: to talk about condoms. Ronald Reagan approved these changes, even
Speaker 1: though they flew in the face of what his surgeon
Speaker 1: general had recommended. Shortly after that, Senator Jesse Helms passed
Speaker 1: a law thing, so wait, hold on, sorry, so these
Speaker 1: people don't even think that married couples use condoms? Well,
Speaker 1: why would you need to do. The only reason you're
Speaker 1: having sex is to make kids, right. Uh. Ronald Reagan
Speaker 1: approved these changes. Uh. Shortly after that, Jesse Helms passed
Speaker 1: a law prohibiting the CDC from using its fund to
Speaker 1: quote promote, encourage, and condone homosexual sexual activities or the
Speaker 1: intravenous use of illegal drugs four thousand did the CDC.
Speaker 1: Was the CDC like, by the way, if you're gonna
Speaker 1: do heroin, don't snort it, inject it? Yeah, why not?
Speaker 1: It said he's not allowed to promote intravenous drugs. Right,
Speaker 1: What was the CDC doing before that? Was it? They
Speaker 1: were they What they're saying is that like by saying, hey,
Speaker 1: here's where you find clean needles. Here's how to like
Speaker 1: make sure your needle is clear, here's how to dispose
Speaker 1: of needles, that kind of stuff, just trying to be
Speaker 1: like you're gonna be fucking shooting drugs with needles, be
Speaker 1: safer with your needles. Wasn't just like going like, hey,
Speaker 1: snorton's for squares. No, the CDC wasn't like, all right,
Speaker 1: so the best h on the block, you're gonna go
Speaker 1: down take a rite at the Pioneer Chicken and you
Speaker 1: want to cook it and inject it. No, man, big
Speaker 1: big Ernie sells smacks soup here. You don't gotta cook it.
Speaker 1: That's the CDC's official report. No. Uh So four thousand
Speaker 1: and fire has died in nine seven. Uh This was
Speaker 1: in spite of the fact that the year that this
Speaker 1: was the year that A z T, the first anti
Speaker 1: HIV drug was approved by the FDA. A z T
Speaker 1: had to be taken every four hours without fail, even
Speaker 1: interrupting your sleep, and came with horrible side effects, including
Speaker 1: muscle soreness and fatigue. Subsequent large scale studies showed almost
Speaker 1: no difference between AZT and place Ebo's seven was a
Speaker 1: big year for AIDS. Not only was it the a
Speaker 1: z T year, it was also the year that the
Speaker 1: first San Francisco AIDS quote was made. It was the
Speaker 1: year that a family with three HIV positive hemophiliac sons
Speaker 1: had their house burned down by an arsonist. It was
Speaker 1: the year the U S shut its borders to HIV
Speaker 1: infected immigrants, and the year Ronald Reagan finally addressed the
Speaker 1: nation about what he now called public health Enemy Number one.
Speaker 1: Not a lot there for humor, except no, I did
Speaker 1: come up with a character. While you're talking Johnny Arson.
Speaker 1: He's like Johnny Carson. Oh good, he lights fires, Oh good,
Speaker 1: weird fiery stuff. We got a really big blaze. That's
Speaker 1: all I know about Johnny Carson. At this point, when
Speaker 1: Reagan finally delivered his very first public speech about AIDS,
Speaker 1: twenty three thousand Americans had already died from the disease.
Speaker 1: Part of why Reagan even addressed it is because thousands
Speaker 1: of hemophilias had also been infected. By this point, many
Speaker 1: were dying. Ryan White was probably the most famous of
Speaker 1: these hemophiliac kids to catch AIDS. He was diagnosed in
Speaker 1: by seven, he'd become one of the most prominent figures
Speaker 1: in the fight against the disease. Since seeing other hemophiliax
Speaker 1: were not gay, they were seen as not deserving what
Speaker 1: had happened to them. This gave the Reagan administration the
Speaker 1: cover that it needed to take effective action against the
Speaker 1: disease that set. In his big speech, Ronald Reagan also
Speaker 1: noted abstinence as an important tool in the fight against AIDS. So, wait, so,
Speaker 1: the lesser from this is, if there is a disease
Speaker 1: that affects only a small part of the population, what
Speaker 1: you want to do, I give that the blood supplies
Speaker 1: give is give that disease to someone that the government
Speaker 1: can use as covered to treat it. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: that is actually the lesson here. Yeah. Uh so here's
Speaker 1: what Ronald reg Ronald Reagan noted that absence was also
Speaker 1: an important too on the fight of aid So he
Speaker 1: during this speech, he said, quote, after all, when it
Speaker 1: comes to preventing AIDS, don't medicine and morality teach the
Speaker 1: same lessons? Fucking I'm sorry that I have nothing like
Speaker 1: it just really like boils my blood. Here's the thing
Speaker 1: in speeches that see Everett Coop gave when he would
Speaker 1: go to colleges. He said the same thing, but he
Speaker 1: was also like, but also, people are gonna do what
Speaker 1: they're gonna do, so let's teach them how to use condoms,
Speaker 1: because I'm a doctor and I don't want people to die.
Speaker 1: Like you can believe that morality says you shouldn't have
Speaker 1: sex outside of marriage. You're not evil if you believe that,
Speaker 1: as long as you're also like, but we should do
Speaker 1: basic things to make sure people understand how to protect
Speaker 1: themselves if they choose to do something different. Coop was
Speaker 1: able to make that kind of leap in his own mind,
Speaker 1: even though he didn't approve of it and make a
Speaker 1: note of what was necessary. Reagan was not able to
Speaker 1: make that leap. Or maybe he was and he was
Speaker 1: just a political coward. I don't know. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: that a little bit. Coopers King, Cooper's King he's he's
Speaker 1: he's not perfect, is what we're saying. You'll find criticisms
Speaker 1: of a coup that are valid, but he's trying. He's
Speaker 1: clearly doesn't want people to die and takes it seriously,
Speaker 1: which is something more than anybody else has done. Um So,
Speaker 1: in four thousand, eight hundred and fifty five more Americans died,
Speaker 1: with the death toll nearing thirty thousand. See Everett Coop
Speaker 1: believed that the government could and should do more, so
Speaker 1: we put together a pamphlet called Understanding Aids that provided
Speaker 1: frank descriptions of anal in oral sex, as well as
Speaker 1: fact based discussions of contraception. It was the sort of
Speaker 1: thing that various grassroots groups across the country had already
Speaker 1: started distributing, particularly in coastal cities with a large gay population.
Speaker 1: But Coop was the Surgeon General, and he had a
Speaker 1: little bit more power than these people. Coop had this
Speaker 1: one pamphlet mailed out to almost every home in America.
Speaker 1: A hundred and seven million families received a copy of
Speaker 1: Understanding Aids. It was the original a O. L disc Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was like the first thing distributed on
Speaker 1: that wide A fucking like your joke, but like that
Speaker 1: that is like it was at the time the largest
Speaker 1: mass mailing in American history. Um, and it's like pictures
Speaker 1: of like how gay sex works and how condoms works.
Speaker 1: So it was how you got online originally. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: it's a line because like laying pipe, you know what
Speaker 1: you someone will get that descriptions of gay sexual practice
Speaker 1: is often sensationalized. Had never before reached so large an audience,
Speaker 1: and now the Surgeon General pressed Americans to learn even
Speaker 1: more about sex through his education campaign, which included promoting
Speaker 1: abstinence and monogamy, but also maintained the importance of using condoms.
Speaker 1: If the sexual revolution of the nineteen sixties and seventies
Speaker 1: had not yet reached every small town and rural outpost
Speaker 1: in the heartland, Coop's pamphlet did so. Not only is
Speaker 1: he giving out information on gay sex is the first
Speaker 1: he's forcing effective sex ad on families in rural America. Well,
Speaker 1: how did it look? How in Texas? How did you
Speaker 1: grow up? I had like such a fear of AIDS
Speaker 1: that it was like terrifying. The idea of sex was terrifying.
Speaker 1: As a kid, I didn't really understand much about what
Speaker 1: it was. To be honest, I don't remember. I'm sure
Speaker 1: there were conversations. I know I remember a couple of
Speaker 1: talks at school about it, but I think I was
Speaker 1: late enough that most of the panic over aids had
Speaker 1: kind of faded by that point. Yeah, I mean the
Speaker 1: panic like it was no longer when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: but also grew up in a pretty egalitarian household where
Speaker 1: you know, my parents were like treat all people the same,
Speaker 1: so there was no like there was no panic at
Speaker 1: home about like gay people or whatever like that. But
Speaker 1: like even in culture, I didn't feel that so like
Speaker 1: there wasn't anything. It wasn't like that, but there was
Speaker 1: still a panic about sex in general in the late
Speaker 1: eighties that into the like nineties, there was definitely a
Speaker 1: panic about like the the like that that was like
Speaker 1: the thing everybody joked about was like making another guy
Speaker 1: do something that looked gay so that everybody can call
Speaker 1: him gay or whatever. Like I was definitely of the
Speaker 1: generation where like when I was in school, the word
Speaker 1: fag was like every fourth word out of my mouth
Speaker 1: and everybody else's mouth that I knew. Like that was
Speaker 1: like it was Texas, Yeah, it was Texas. It was
Speaker 1: the most one of the most common. It was one
Speaker 1: of those things. When I was like eighteen nineteen and
Speaker 1: then finally got out of school and into the world,
Speaker 1: I realized, like, oh, is it really fucked up word
Speaker 1: to use all the time? You should you shouldn't say
Speaker 1: that about people, But it was it was I don't know,
Speaker 1: like I don't remember any education about AIDS. I don't
Speaker 1: remember ever learning any of that. Well there was, I mean,
Speaker 1: it was just like a generalized panic about That's what
Speaker 1: I was saying. Like, it wasn't like a panic about
Speaker 1: gay people. And I was that's because I grew up
Speaker 1: in like a household where everyone was treated the same
Speaker 1: unless you were a piece of ship. Like that's where
Speaker 1: my parents were like you know this, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: they sat me down at some point and they're like,
Speaker 1: don't use gay, Like you know, gay was slang at
Speaker 1: the time for like that was dumb, and they're like,
Speaker 1: don't use that because there are gay people that we
Speaker 1: know and you know, and they're that hurts their feelings,
Speaker 1: and don't use these certain words. You can use the
Speaker 1: word funck and the word ship, don't use it around
Speaker 1: the rabbi or whatever. Like there's certain context, but there's
Speaker 1: like forbidden words where like these hurt people's feelings. There
Speaker 1: was um swear words that you could use and that,
Speaker 1: and so the thing was like it went from being
Speaker 1: a like a panic about gay people to a panic
Speaker 1: about sex at some point. I think it became like
Speaker 1: when I remember it, because I was in you know,
Speaker 1: I was born in eighty eight, so I was I
Speaker 1: was not conscious during eight years old. Um yeah, so
Speaker 1: like I went. What I remember was more of a
Speaker 1: generalized panic about things that weren't head or normative. Like
Speaker 1: that was the thing. Like there was no like it
Speaker 1: wasn't like if you're gay, you're going to get AIDS.
Speaker 1: When I was a kid, it was that like gay
Speaker 1: meant not what we expected, like straight masculine men, and
Speaker 1: so that's silly and you should make fun of it.
Speaker 1: Like that was sort of my what I grew up with,
Speaker 1: and that was less than I didn't really catch any
Speaker 1: that from my parents. That was just like school like that.
Speaker 1: So there's this almost phone be everywhere, and like it
Speaker 1: was not like it's not like I went to a
Speaker 1: high school that was like super gay friendly, but it
Speaker 1: was I don't think it was as I don't think
Speaker 1: the homophobia was a suffocating and I mean I'll ask
Speaker 1: my gay friends from high school what they thought. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I certainly had. I had one gay friend when I
Speaker 1: was in high school that I met when I was
Speaker 1: a senior. He came out to me when I was
Speaker 1: a senior in high school, and that was the first
Speaker 1: gay person that I knew. Um, so it was definitely
Speaker 1: like not you know, it was it was not a but,
Speaker 1: but we were also we were also passed enough the
Speaker 1: AIDS epidemic that like the only thing I remember in
Speaker 1: school about AIDS was then really driving home to us
Speaker 1: that you can't get it from the water fountains, Like
Speaker 1: that was the biggest part. That's the that's the thing
Speaker 1: that's stuck in my mind about my high school agent ucation.
Speaker 1: But I was, I wonder, now if that's Texas versus Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: if that's yeah, south of the Mason Dixon line, it
Speaker 1: was like still full of homophobia into the nineties, and
Speaker 1: north of the Mason Dixon line it turned into like
Speaker 1: a sex paranoia in general thing. I I certainly can't.
Speaker 1: I would I would describe a lot of what I
Speaker 1: in Canada is a sex paranoia in general thing but
Speaker 1: I I couldn't tell you what it was like outside
Speaker 1: of Texas because I only grew up in the one spot. Um,
Speaker 1: but I will tell you what. This pamphlet Coop sent
Speaker 1: out looked like, Uh, this is the front. Why don't
Speaker 1: you check out. I find a little bit of humor
Speaker 1: in the last question listed on the front of the
Speaker 1: pamphlet says understanding AIDS And there's a bunch of pictures
Speaker 1: of people. It's very multiculty and it says what do
Speaker 1: you really know about AIDS? Are you at risk? AIDS?
Speaker 1: And sex? And why no one has gotten AIDS from mosquitoes?
Speaker 1: Which tells you what what people knew about it at
Speaker 1: the time where Coop was like, all right, what are
Speaker 1: the big things we have to address? Oh, mosquitoes. Everybody's
Speaker 1: asking about mosquitoes. You could see that. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know it makes about You've got to get the
Speaker 1: info out. Yeah, And there was like it was our
Speaker 1: already around the time where arachnophobia came out and so
Speaker 1: people were worried about bugs. Yeah, yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: very basic thing. But people flip their ship over this
Speaker 1: like this is a major issue. There's tons of like
Speaker 1: political cartoons, people freaking out over the pampo worried about Skeeter.
Speaker 1: I don't want him to talk about how gay people
Speaker 1: have sex like it there. It freaked people out, and
Speaker 1: it was a legitimately courageous move from Coop to be like, no,
Speaker 1: we're fucking mailing this out to every family in the country.
Speaker 1: And they did it. Uh. It took way longer than
Speaker 1: you'd have hoped, but it happened. In a nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 1: This fucking thing gets out and finally people start to
Speaker 1: get forced on them some practical sexual education. Um No.
Speaker 1: It's important to note that, see Everett Coope was not
Speaker 1: a hippie dippie dude. He was not You would certainly
Speaker 1: not call him pro gay um like. His advice was
Speaker 1: specifically like, don't have sex with anyone who could carry
Speaker 1: the virus of AIDS, and then he would go on
Speaker 1: to after a couple of paragraphs of why you shouldn't
Speaker 1: do it. If you do decide to do this anyway,
Speaker 1: use a condom. Here's how condoms work. Like. It was
Speaker 1: the the most couched it possibly could have been, but
Speaker 1: at least he was getting the information out. If you
Speaker 1: don't use a condom, just do hand stuff. Yeah, just
Speaker 1: do it well, just do hand stuff was the second
Speaker 1: pamphlet he sent out to a hundred and seven million homes.
Speaker 1: It was forty seven pages of really hardcore hand pornogress.
Speaker 1: Should I use lub No, he's a surgeon general is
Speaker 1: strict on that ship. Bible doesn't say nothing about luber
Speaker 1: The only luber can you're gonna need is a single
Speaker 1: page from the King James Bible, and you're gonna wrap
Speaker 1: that around yourself. Of Christ is the only Luvian. Oh boy.
Speaker 1: As I said before, Coupe Savorite Coop agreed with President
Speaker 1: Reagan that religion, morality, Uh, we're in lockstep on the
Speaker 1: matter of AIDS. Abstinence was the best way to deal
Speaker 1: with it. But he also was like, let's fucking teach
Speaker 1: people about condoms and stuff. Teach people about fucking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's teach people about fucking. That was see Everet Coope,
Speaker 1: the Man who taught America to fuck another great name
Speaker 1: for his bio pic. On January nineteen eighty nine, Ronald
Speaker 1: Reagan left office. More than more than fourteen thousand Americans
Speaker 1: died from AIDS that year. Another eighteen thousand died in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety. One of these was Ryan White. The President
Speaker 1: wrote him a public letter which was more than Rock
Speaker 1: Hudson got. Here's a quote from a writer with a
Speaker 1: New Yorker who actually knew Ryan. Reagan wrote a letter
Speaker 1: that letter that ended with the words, Ryan, my dear
Speaker 1: young friend, we will see you again. But that letter
Speaker 1: really just shows the limits of Reagan's sympathy. Ryan White
Speaker 1: was an absolutely delightful Indiana schoolboy, so he was an
Speaker 1: innocent AIDS victim, unlike the gay men Reagan did not
Speaker 1: like to mention. It is no coincidence that Reagan would
Speaker 1: feel comfortable signaling singling White out to honor. Nor is
Speaker 1: it a chance that the single biggest piece of HIV
Speaker 1: legislation ever enacted in the United States is called the
Speaker 1: Ryan White Act. I should note before we end that
Speaker 1: Rock Hudson was not the only friend of the Reagans
Speaker 1: to die of AIDS. Ronald Reagan's good buddy Roy Khon
Speaker 1: died of AIDS in nineteen eighty six. He was apparently
Speaker 1: furious when, during treatment his doctor repeatedly insisted that he
Speaker 1: stay abstinent, and that that was most of the advice
Speaker 1: that con was able to get. The Reagans did send
Speaker 1: con a letter before he died, but neither showed up
Speaker 1: at his funeral. He was buried in a tie with
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan's name on it. The AIDS epidemic continued to
Speaker 1: kill more than half a million Americans had died by
Speaker 1: two thousand, two, eleven years before Ronald Reagan's daughter would
Speaker 1: claim that her dad had supported gay marriage, because in
Speaker 1: two thousand thirteen, that's exactly what Reagan's daughter said that
Speaker 1: she thinks her dad would have backed. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: was past stretch. I will say she might be right
Speaker 1: because in two thousand thirteen, Reagan wouldn't have had to
Speaker 1: pay a political price for supporting gay marriage. And I
Speaker 1: think that really was most of what it was for him.
Speaker 1: He would have been fine if he thought in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two, you know, jumping on AIDS and like increasing
Speaker 1: funding to it would have won him election in eighty four,
Speaker 1: he would have done it. I don't think he had
Speaker 1: a moral issue with this. I think he was just
Speaker 1: a coward. Well that's a moral issue. Well I don't
Speaker 1: think I don't think. No, that is a moral issue,
Speaker 1: But that's not He didn't have a moral issue with
Speaker 1: treating gay people of AIDS. He himself was a coward
Speaker 1: and that was a moral issue. He had a deeper
Speaker 1: failure that homophobia, which I think is important to note
Speaker 1: because I think people look and there, oh, Reagan was homophobic,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, well, it's actually scarier if he was
Speaker 1: not homophobic for the time, but just too much of
Speaker 1: a coward to do anything because it was bad politically
Speaker 1: because all these people who supported him thought that gay
Speaker 1: people were monsters. And I do think that's probably closer
Speaker 1: to the real story, which is scarier. I mean, well,
Speaker 1: do we know like when he really started to get dementia.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a lot of debate around that. Some
Speaker 1: people are going to say most of his second term
Speaker 1: he was starting to like he was definitely not from
Speaker 1: five on. But I don't really know. But are there
Speaker 1: any like I mean, we all think that, like something's
Speaker 1: wrong with Trump because like he says insane things and
Speaker 1: can't talk and is in general just a mush brained freak.
Speaker 1: But were there any speeches? Again, I was a child,
Speaker 1: so I don't really remember anything. Were there's speeches? Were
Speaker 1: like Reagan could at least talk, right, He was a
Speaker 1: real good talker. He was a real good talker the
Speaker 1: entire time he was he was president. Okay, so there's
Speaker 1: never any kind of like it was never to the
Speaker 1: apps of what we're experiencing now. No, But like like
Speaker 1: he didn't he wasn't tweeting and stuff. Every appearance he
Speaker 1: had was carefully stayed managed. His speeches were written for
Speaker 1: him and stuff like he was good at delivering the lines.
Speaker 1: I don't know how much he'd started to suffer from
Speaker 1: Alzheimer's at that point, but they they also think the
Speaker 1: fucking forty years before that, the president's staff was able
Speaker 1: to hide the fact that he couldn't walk. So it's
Speaker 1: clearly not hard if you've got a good staff to
Speaker 1: hide ship from the country. Um or at least it
Speaker 1: was back then. Um So at the weekend at Bernie's
Speaker 1: FDR's legs what oh yeah, No, No, most of the
Speaker 1: nation didn't new that, No, that he couldn't walk. They
Speaker 1: would do they had like special braces made for him,
Speaker 1: and he would like walk with people who you wouldn't
Speaker 1: quite be able to tell where. And the press pool
Speaker 1: was in on it too, Like it was one of
Speaker 1: those things where people were like, but they're there's fucking
Speaker 1: wars going on. Don't let anyone know that the president
Speaker 1: can't stand up. I have this idea that he's wearing
Speaker 1: a harness with strings attached to and there's a car
Speaker 1: driving and it just like it like strings, like a
Speaker 1: Marionett Movi is like Harry Truman, just puppets here hering him. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that's dark. We're the bastards now, Um we have become.
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think ethically, I'm on the
Speaker 1: right side of history. I mean, Aftyr was was fine
Speaker 1: enough president, It was fine. Yeah, he's fine. New deal
Speaker 1: was good. New Deal was good. Not not not being
Speaker 1: a fascist was really the best thing he did. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: he could have kudos to that. Could have joined World
Speaker 1: War two earlier maybe, or done something economically to help
Speaker 1: help UH, like sanctions on Hitler before, could have agreed
Speaker 1: to take Jewish refugees from the country rather than before. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The only president you're going to find with less than
Speaker 1: a couple of buckets of blood on his hands is
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter. And yeah, that's that's just the way it is.
Speaker 1: He's the He's the one nice guy we let be president.
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter. I would vote start the campaign. Here nineties
Speaker 1: six year old Jimmy Carter. Is there ever a symbol
Speaker 1: about how decrepiti America has become? Even as good as
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carter is hauling up a nineties year old white man.
Speaker 1: This is the best we can do. No, it's not
Speaker 1: the best we can do. And Jimmy Carter would be
Speaker 1: the first person to tell you that. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: crazy that Carter had to give up his peanut farm
Speaker 1: because it might make a conflict of interest when he
Speaker 1: was president. What if you're nicer to it with peanuts subsidies? Yeah? No, No,
Speaker 1: Now the president owns a hotel that foreign dignitary stay it.
Speaker 1: But it's fine. No, we've gotten off the subject of
Speaker 1: the bastards of today, and we were talking about other bastards.
Speaker 1: So many bastards and so many people behind them. I
Speaker 1: will tell you, are I will ask you. Are you
Speaker 1: converted to my way of thinking, which is that Reagan
Speaker 1: himself was probably less homophobic than most people of his
Speaker 1: age at the time, uh, and was acting the way
Speaker 1: he did and ignoring the crisis because of political expediency
Speaker 1: rather than as of homophobia. That's my my, my take.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing I'm a pragmatist, and if there's no
Speaker 1: difference in practice, then there's no difference in the philosophy
Speaker 1: behind the practice. So regardless of what he believed, his
Speaker 1: actions were extremely homophobic and lead to the deaths of
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of people six d and fifty thousand
Speaker 1: I think so far hundreds of thousands of people. And
Speaker 1: just like the um the spread of the AIDS epidemic,
Speaker 1: he didn't whatever he believed, the practice was we don't
Speaker 1: give a shit about gay people, and we don't give
Speaker 1: a shit if they die, And that to me is unforgivable.
Speaker 1: I don't care what. I don't care if, like him
Speaker 1: and Nancy were both secretly gay and they're like, well,
Speaker 1: we can't if we say anything, you know, uh, people
Speaker 1: are gonna find out our secret or whatever. I find
Speaker 1: it unconscionable. I would matter what. It's certainly unconscionable, no
Speaker 1: matter what I will say. One of the things is
Speaker 1: interesting to me about this from a moral point of
Speaker 1: view is that I think you have with Reagan, you
Speaker 1: have a guy who I think, in his social life
Speaker 1: did not act like a homophobe. Because the number of
Speaker 1: gay people were very close with the Reagan's Nancy and Ronald,
Speaker 1: both in their social life, were clearly capable of not
Speaker 1: being judgmental assholes to their friends who were gay. See
Speaker 1: Everett Coope. I doubt ever had a gay friend. He
Speaker 1: was definitely a guy who was homophobic in terms of
Speaker 1: he thought it was wrong for gay people to have sex.
Speaker 1: I think what we have in the two of them
Speaker 1: is you have one man who's homophobic, one man who's
Speaker 1: not particularly homophobic, but is all he cares about is
Speaker 1: politics and his his career and advancing. And I think
Speaker 1: Coop cared more about human life. So even though he
Speaker 1: was homophobic, he did the right thing. While Reagan wasn't
Speaker 1: super homophobic for his era, he did the wrong thing
Speaker 1: because all he cared about was politics. And I do
Speaker 1: think that's interesting that you have these two guys who
Speaker 1: you would expect them to act completely the opposite way
Speaker 1: in this situation, but instead, the guy who has a
Speaker 1: very strong religious condemnation for his whole life it's homosexuality,
Speaker 1: does the right thing, and the guy who has a
Speaker 1: bunch of gay friends does the wrong thing because it's
Speaker 1: the politically expedient thing. I think that's interesting. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: it's about it's you know, an ethical question, which is
Speaker 1: like and and really ethics comes down to like will
Speaker 1: you do the right thing no matter what the circumstances are?
Speaker 1: And COOPI will do the right thing no matter what
Speaker 1: the circumstances are because he has deeply held ethical beliefs,
Speaker 1: whereas Reagan is at best a sociopath and at worst
Speaker 1: a psychopath. What are the differences? I don't know. There's
Speaker 1: like but like, do you know what I mean? There's
Speaker 1: there's not. There is no deeply held ethical belief besides
Speaker 1: a kind of like instrumental whatever will help me advance.
Speaker 1: And that's not ethics. That is you know, that's the
Speaker 1: gnashing teeth of under the bed creatures. I agree with you, Andy.
Speaker 1: Do you want to plug your plugables? Sure? Hey everyone,
Speaker 1: We have a podcast me and my dear NAO. We
Speaker 1: have a podcast called Couples Therapy. We have a live
Speaker 1: show here in Los Angeles and around the country where
Speaker 1: we have stand ups do live sets. Uh if they
Speaker 1: are lovers and spouses and siblings and best friends, they
Speaker 1: do sets together about their relationship and then on the
Speaker 1: podcast we take the best live sets and bring them
Speaker 1: to you. And it's people like says, year's a made
Speaker 1: in Nicole Bayer or Rachel Bloom from craziest girlfriend and
Speaker 1: her husband, and lots of great comics you don't know,
Speaker 1: comics you do know. And then NAO, me and I
Speaker 1: talk and you you. Yeah, it's fine. So a couple
Speaker 1: of therapy here on the house Stuff Works Network, and
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards. We'll be
Speaker 1: back Tuesday next Tuesday with someone else terrible and something
Speaker 1: else terrible to talk about, So please tune in, uh
Speaker 1: and uh, and you can check out the sources for
Speaker 1: this episode on on our website Behind the Bastards dot com.
Speaker 1: We'll have a good old picture see Everett Coop. Up
Speaker 1: there you'll you'll all enjoy that. He's a he he
Speaker 1: looks like a guy named see Everett Coop. Anyway, you
Speaker 1: can find us on Twitter and Instagram at at Bastard's pod.
Speaker 1: You can find me on Twitter at I right, okay,
Speaker 1: And that is the the end of the episode. And
Speaker 1: oh yeah yeah. You can find our shirts on Tea
Speaker 1: public Behind the Bastards, So buy some shirts. Uh. Reagan's
Speaker 1: ghost will scream for every shirt that you buy. But
Speaker 1: also you can buy phone cases, and uh and and
Speaker 1: and mugs mugs. Thank you for the word mugs in
Speaker 1: the word mugs stickers, all of which will make Reagan's
Speaker 1: ghost screech in horror and shame. So do that by
Speaker 1: buying products on tea Public dot com and until next week.
Speaker 1: Real I love about jelly beans.