The Entertainment - Journalistic Irresponsibility Of The Affluent Is Killing Us

While lighting the woodstove the other day I ran across a piece about the death of the Broadway composer-lyricist Michael Friedman due to AIDS at the age of 41, about the age of many of the men and women I knew who died of AIDS in the 1980s and 90s.  That a highly educated (Harvard grad), affluent man who was five years old when the first cases of AIDS started being reported and was seven when the Center for Disease Control published its findings that this terrifying new syndrome was almost certainly caused by an infections agent spread by unprotected sex and needle sharing and, several weeks later, the actual virus, HIV, was identified should die of AIDS in 2017 was pretty shocking.  Especially shocking is that Micheal Friedman, certainly one of the most successful young composer-lyricists and, I'd guess, not poor, not discriminated against, not disadvantaged, WAS DIAGNOSED NINE WEEKS BEFORE HIS DEATH.  He was not a member of the most at-risk groups, Black People, Latinos, especially those living in the American South, he was a member of a still at-risk group, White Gay Males.  I am appalled that after thirty-four years since HIV was identified, after the ways it is spread were identified, sex, especially anal sex, though also vaginal sex, and needle exchange, such a story would appear in the New York Times about highly educated, affluent people.  It is disgusting that the richest country in the world has any but the most rare of infections going on four decades into the epidemic when we know how it is spread and almost all of those means of transmission are preventable.

Reading the piece published in the New York Times last October 15th brought the terrible experience of witnessing AIDS in the LGBT population back to me and it reminded me that the subsequent presentation of sex since the age of AIDS was declared ended by mainstream American publications in the 1990s.   In the wake of the creation of a series of effective, then, ineffective, treatments of HIV infection, the popularization of the forms of sex most likely to infect people and promiscuity as well as the revival of heroin addiction - brought to you by way of Big Pharma and the opioid industry - has contributed to the profound depression I'm in right now.

We, as a people, have learned nothing from the deaths of those who died of AIDS in the 1980s till today 

not only that but the media has promoted everything, from opioid ads on TV and promotion through talk-shows to anal sex and pornography and promiscuity.   And that is something that is true for the media of the alleged left as it is the mainstream media and entertainment.   Though I would say that probably the most responsibility for popularizing such behavior has to go to entertainment TV and the movies, because that's what most people watch.   Alternet and Salon have certainly contributed to the sexual milieu in which HIV spreads, especially among children and young adults,  but few people read them as compare to watching the porn they support and the movies and TV shows that promote irresponsible sex.  That you could watch ads for opioids which led directly to the increase of heroin injection between segments only add to their culpability.

That the New York Times is where I read about the death of Micheal Friedman is ironic because it was the same venue where I first read the irresponsible claim that "The Plague" had ended two decades ago.   Much as I detest him and think he was part of the criminal  irresponsibility, Andrew Sullivan's article wasn't nearly as bad as the headline message, one that was repeated and promoted the idea that HIV-AIDS was a "manageable problem" a plague that had ended.  That wasn't and isn't the truth.  It's especially not true for poor People, for Black People, for members of other minority groups, it certainly isn't true for people who are in the bondange to the sex industry.   I think there is a large amount of racism and class bias in the media treatment or, rather, non-treatment of AIDS after the time when many of its affluent White Male carriers with the money to pay for the series of drug protocols they needed to survive, living in an urban setting where it was conveniently available to them and the education to understand the importance of strict adherence to their doctors' advice let the matter drop as their publications popularized anal sex, hooking-up and porn-prostitution.

Recently there has been a dangerous new strain of HIV discovered in the Philippines, a country which has seen a drastic increase in HIV-AIDS, more than 3,100 percent, in the past decade.   Last year their mafia-president Duterte was advising against condom use.  He did so, not on the basis of Catholic teaching but on the basis that so many American men have rejected them, they don't find sex with them satisfying.  You can scoff and snark all you want but what he's doing is really nothing that the porn industry here promotes to young men and women, children, as you can see all over the web if you research what they really promote.  The porn industry in Los Angeles, which employs prostitutes from the interlinking vector of STD transmission which are the "actors" in porn did a huge campaign to try to overturn the regulations on porn filmed in Los Angeles county requiring the use of condoms.  I had some huge rows about that with First Amendment fan boys and gals, and I suspected, at least one porn industry troll at Alternet and Salon and elsewhere.  I can't say that the largely college educated crowds that comment in those places were very enthusiastic for the protection of the "sex workers" through that regulation.

I could probably spend a year of research and writing on this issue, producing evidence that the American media, the American journalistic establishment and, most of all the entertainment industry has promoted out People as a perfect vector in which either a new round of AIDS deaths or some new sexually-needle transmitted virus or bacteria disease could arise.  The irresponsibility has really been that big.  The population of the Philippines, the Black and Latino  populations of the impoverished, discriminated against rural South have excuses which the affluent, well-connected, educated urban population in control of the media don't have.

This UN video is six years old.  Have you heard about this yet?