On Hillary Clinton's misstatements on Nancy Reagan, Honduras, and more
In a matter of a few days, Hillary Clinton grossly mischaracterized Nancy and Ronald Reagan’s record on HIV/AIDS, apologized briefly on twitter, and then apologized at greater length, less badly, on Medium.
First, as reported on Truthdig (among other places), she praised the recently deceased former first lady Nancy Reagan and President Reagan for starting “a national conversation” on the deadly AIDS virus:
“It may be hard for your viewers to remember how difficult it was for people to talk about HIV/AIDS back in the 1980s,” Clinton said on MSNBC. “And because of both President and Mrs. Reagan — in particular Mrs. Reagan — we started a national conversation, when before nobody would talk about it, nobody wanted to do anything about it, and that, too, is something I really appreciate with her very effective low-key advocacy. But it penetrated the public conscience and people began to say, ‘Hey, we have to do something about this too.’ ”
Nothing could be further from the truth, reports Zaid Jilani at The Intercept:
Clinton’s telling of HIV/AIDS history doesn’t align with the facts. President Reagan waited seven years to address the HIV/AIDS crisis, even as thousands of Americans died from the disease. Dr. C. Everett Koop, the administration’s surgeon general, said the president dragged his feet on the issue “because transmission of AIDS was understood to be primarily in the homosexual population and in those who abused intravenous drugs.” Koop said their position was that AIDS victims were “only getting what they justly deserve.”
In 1985 the Reagans’ friend Rock Hudson, then dying of AIDS, traveled to Paris in a desperate attempt to be treated by a French military doctor. As BuzzFeed’s Chris Geidner reported last year, Hudson’s publicist sent a telegram to his Hollywood friends in the White House, begging for help in getting Hudson moved to a French military hospital where the doctor could treat him. Nancy Reagan personally saw and rejected the request.
In 1985 the Reagans’ friend Rock Hudson, then dying of AIDS, traveled to Paris in a desperate attempt to be treated by a French military doctor. As BuzzFeed’s Chris Geidner reported last year, Hudson’s publicist sent a telegram to his Hollywood friends in the White House, begging for help in getting Hudson moved to a French military hospital where the doctor could treat him. Nancy Reagan personally saw and rejected the request.
Says Kevin Cathcart, executive director of Lambda Legal, “Shameful is not even strong enough a word for the record of the Reagan administration on this.
After an outcry from advocates of people with AIDS and HIV, Clinton apologized for her claims about Nancy Reagan, first on twitter, and then at greater length on Medium, proposing a number of useful responses, including increasing access to drug treatments, expanding Medicaid, and "reforming outdated and stigmatizing HIV criminalization laws." That last is a strange locution, suggesting that there was a time when laws criminalizing HIV were timely, and that all they need is a little reform, not repeal. Clinton did not mention the need for, say, single-payer health care, or Medicare for all--just capping the cost of medications for HIV/AIDS.
Steven Thrasher at The Guardian had an idea about why Clinton would fabricate the claim about Nancy's HIV/AIDS advocacy:
Why, in 2016, did the Democratic frontrunner engage so blithely in the erasure of the people who actually did start the “national conversation” about AIDS? Was it because they were gay men of the in-your-face variety of activism – many of whom died of the virus?
When Clinton said the Reagans led the way on AIDS when “nobody wanted to do anything about it," she was erasing these people from history. People initially got HIV in this country through IV drug use, blood transfusions, and sex. But while the Reagans looked the other way – even when a friend asked for help – it was was queer activists who were loud as hell in New York and San Francisco who forced the nation to face the plague.
Clinton said she could “really appreciate” Nancy Reagan’s “very effective low-key advocacy” that “penetrated the public conscience” on AIDS. But the reality is, the people who really started the conversation were not low-key. They were not polite. They were not quiet in any way. They staged die-ins. They shut down streets. They threw the cremated ashes of their loved ones, already killed by AIDS, over the fence of the White House to demand action. So what was Clinton trying to gain by praising the Reagans in this way in the first place?
[Thrasher fears] that she was engaging in a kind of dog-whistling, using the moment of Nancy Reagan’s death to appeal to voters who nostalgically loved the Reagans and dream of morning in America again. [Perhaps] by invoking a false AIDS history, she was appealing to those who want a simpler time before gays got uppity. Perhaps she wants to peel off some of the white men voting for Sanders in the primary. Perhaps she is trolling for Reagan Democrats who might consider her over Trump in making America great again.
[Thrasher has been] frightened for some time that the crisis of AIDS is not over, especially for black America, and yet it has again largely been erased from our national political consciousness. AIDS, which is projected to infect one in two black gay American men, is almost invisible from the presidential race.
I'd write a bunch of #HistoryByHillary jokes but I can't think of anything worse than "The Reagans started the conversation about AIDS." — Ryan Houlihan (@RyanHoulihan)
"Columbus really started the conversation on how to peacefully enter a country and become a productive citizen." #HistoryByHillary --- BrownBlaze (@brownblaze)
Ronald Reagan started a national conversation about the plight of the Sandanistas in Nicaragua. #HistoryByHillary --(re)becca ツ ( @bexology_)
"As a feminist, I was obliged to bomb those wedding parties in Yemen, Pakistan, and Afghanistan." ---Steven Salaita (@stevesalaita)
I would like to thank Henry Kissinger for being a strong advocate for peace around the world. #HistoryByHillary --Viva la causa! (@70torinoman)
#HistoryByHillary: Walmart has always stood for worker's rights. --Max Waller (@maxrafaelwaller)
"Columbus really started the conversation on how to peacefully enter a country and become a productive citizen." #HistoryByHillary --- BrownBlaze (@brownblaze)
Ronald Reagan started a national conversation about the plight of the Sandanistas in Nicaragua. #HistoryByHillary --(re)becca ツ ( @bexology_)
"As a feminist, I was obliged to bomb those wedding parties in Yemen, Pakistan, and Afghanistan." ---Steven Salaita (@stevesalaita)
I would like to thank Henry Kissinger for being a strong advocate for peace around the world. #HistoryByHillary --Viva la causa! (@70torinoman)
#HistoryByHillary: Walmart has always stood for worker's rights. --Max Waller (@maxrafaelwaller)
Some of Clinton's other revisions of the past have also gotten attention with the same hastag, including her omission of Bernie Sanders from the fight for health care reform, and, less prominently if perhaps more importantly, her role in Honduras, where she supported the 2009 military coup that ousted the country’s democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya.
As Honduran scholar Dana Frank points out in Foreign Affairs, the U.S.-backed post-coup government “rewarded coup loyalists with top ministries,” opening the door for further “violence and anarchy.” The homicide rate in Honduras, already the highest in the world, increased by 50 percent from 2008 to 2011; political repression, the murder of opposition political candidates, peasant organizers and LGBT activists increased and continue to this day. Femicides skyrocketed. The violence and insecurity were exacerbated by a generalized institutional collapse. Drug-related violence has worsened amid allegations of rampant corruption in Honduras’ police and government. While the gangs are responsible for much of the violence, Honduran security forces have engaged in a wave of killings and other human rights crimes with impunity.
This has lead recently to the assassination of activist Berta Cáceres and the attacks on and detention of the only witness, Gustavo Castro Soto. In an interview two years ago, Cáceres called attention to Clinton's acknowledgement, in her book Hard Choices, of her role in the coup. But Cáceres must have read a hardcover edition of the book, because the relevant section has been deleted from the paperback reissue.
As Noam Chomsky has noted, "Historical amnesia is a dangerous phenomenon, not only because it undermines moral and intellectual integrity, but also because it lays the groundwork for crimes that still lie ahead."
[Audio version for the March 14, 2016 Old Mole Variety Hour]