Mike Huckabee's suggestion, issued fifteen years ago, that the interests of health might be served if AIDS sufferers were quarantined, was certainly alarmist. AIDS had entered into its second decade as a public disease by the time Huckabee opened his mouth, so it's not as though the idea of getting the disease from a handshake or a kiss still held any currency. Christian conservatives and gay activists, two groups so diametrically opposed on so many issues concerning AIDS, were united in irresponsibly pushing the notion of an AIDS "plague" in America. For different reasons both groups had cause to scare America about AIDS, a disease whose reality is scary enough.
More than a quarter century after AIDS first made headlines, the mythology has it that yahoos like Mike Huckabee somehow facilitated the spread of AIDS by needless worrying about catching the AIDS virus from sharing a Coke. A story less told involves the hysterical reaction of gay activists, which, unlike the paranoia surrounding, say, public toilet seats, actually contributed to the body count. In 1985, to cite one example, the Lambda Legal Defense Fund and the National Gay Task Force actually sued the federal government to block the release of the AIDS test. Hypothetical concerns over privacy fueled their courtroom hysteria. Gay activists were so successful in harming gay people in New York that they convinced the city's health czar to ban the test in the Big Apple.
One might also look back in disbelief upon the ignorance of gay groups uniformly fighting to keep open the bathhouses that incubated the virus, or upon the miasma of a homosexual Left that saw efforts blocking homosexual blood donors as something akin to the holocaust. The media doesn't remind us about that political idiocy. The golden-oldie alarmism of Mike Huckabee, on the other hand, follows him to this day.
In effect, the media have instituted a quarantine on AIDS idiocy. Christian conservatives who exaggerated the disease's impact, which led to draconian "solutions" such as quarantines, make news years after the fact. The gay Left, and the plain old Left for that matter, made dire predictions of billions of deaths, stoked fears of a heterosexual epidemic in America, and fought against common sense measures such as the AIDS test. Yet, there is a media blackout on the embarrassing, and deadly, ignorance on the Left regarding AIDS.
Huckabee showed bad judgment and contempt for civil liberties. But how many people did his foolishness kill?
Christian conservatives have never had any real influence on the American political scene. It does not make much sense to still be fretting over something that a Christian conservative said years ago. This is in contrast to the gay left and the plain old left. These groups have wielded tremendous influence over the American political scene for decades. When they err, as all people will, it is a news worthy event and it should be covered by the media.
The same lame stream media that tried to foist AIDS as a universally deadly disease and then squelch it when it was realized that it was a disease specific to only groups who choose to participate in certain kinds of deviant sexual behaviors is the same media that has catapulted Huckabee into the limelight as a viable front running candidate.
They discount the fact that Huckabee made such a ludicrous statement with regards to quarantining AIDS patients as him taking a brave stand and not shifting his positions. Huh??!! Any other of the strong candidates would never have gotten away with this. But there's a move afoot to propel this guy beyond any of the few legitimate front runners. And the liberal media loves blood in the GOP water.
Huckabee is another scam artist extraordinarie from Arkansas who should not be taken seriously. Much in the same way that those who know the risks from promiscuous sexual practices where the AIDS virus could be contracted, with the help of the way left media, tell us that it's everybody's problem.
He may actually be even less informed and inquisitive than Bush. His quote from his Senate campaign isn't all that horrible in that it is silly and overblown, but the ignorance is sad.
when the NIE on Iran came out a week ago, the next day Huckabee was asked about it in a press conference and he had never heard of it, and then had not seen it or had anyone brief him on it. The biggest news in a while and he hadn't a clue. A reporter went ahead and summarised what it said for him and his thoughts on it were still muddled. Apparently last week he also appeared on Don Imus's show and mentioned that on foreign policy he "is no expert, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night."
This guy looks stupid, or straight up admits he doesn't know much, cracks a joke and then all is forgotten and everyone moves on. I know that Presidents end up w/ teams of advisers to brief them and handle a lot of this stuff but this guy is ridiculous.
How bright or competent would you have to be to be the governor of a half baked state like Arkansas? And he didn't even get formally elected!
From the Drudge Report..."DEMS HOLD FIRE ON HUCKABEE; SEE 'EASY KILL' IN GENERAL ELECTION"
Exactamundo.
Wonder why the leftist media is in his corner?
I'm sorry. How many disease-resistant bacteria and virii (viruses?) have emerged as a result of the need to constantly administer antibiotics to people with AIDS?
I feel bad for these folks, but they become like Mr. Burns from the Simpsons: They have EVERYTHING. And as they are constantly treated for EVERYTHING and their immune system (which is normally adaptive) is now nonexistant and replaced with drugs (which are not adaptive), their infections gain resistance and are passed on to others.
We're now subject to the return of TB as a real killer. Pretty soon we'll have to worry about our kids dying of scarlet fever or something...
i thought Huck was the one, well just like i thought my stillers would win i was wrong. but i dont care about his aids comment, hell i thought the same back in the day. but see aids aint killin people now so noone cares. people runnin around "stickin every hole" with no cares. oh well maybe the next plague will be worse and will see if the Q talk comes back :)
To some extent, I'm sure that this is the case Homer. But also consider that this country used to require that immigrants be medically checked and if they proved to be unfit, would either quarantine them or send them back.
As our government now allows ANYBODY to just walk into the U.S., these rules and standards do not apply thus many diseases that had been eradicated from our population for decades have resurged.
I’m not clear why, when talking about illegal immigration, that the people sworn to protect us don’t talk about this.
Well, I don't see any problem with quarantines. As a dear friend once told me, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one.
Woo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLpLU7D7MWk
