Clareified

Years ago, when I was a third year associate at First LLP, I was doing document review in one of the windowless conference rooms for which New York law firms are so well known. With about five or six other twenty something attorneys arranged throughout the room, we got to talking about everything and anything. On one of our many long nights of shuffling through paper looking for legal buzzwords, I casually said “so, does anyone die of AIDS anymore?” One of the first years on the team, a middle eastern guy with a goatee, who was actually a few years older than I was, looked straight at me, tilted his head and without missing a beat asked “have you heard of Africa?”
Oh yeeeaaaahhh. I laughed.
Of course people still died from AIDS, but not Americans. Except that’s not true either. Women of color, namely blacks and latinos, in the US are contracting HIV and dying from AIDS in pandemic numbers. The View featured a segment on the subject this morning (and here I will note I was sitting in a waiting room and the TV was tuned to ABC…while I have no trouble confessing to watching hours of Hannah Montana on the Disney network, I will not have my reputation tarnished with the suggestion that I would voluntarily watch the View) The expert doctor, one Dr. Rodriquez, or as Whoopi called him “my good friend” seemed to blame rampant cheating by men of color with other women or men coupled with the wanting of babies by women for the high numbers of infection due to unprotected sex. He also seemed to blame the thoughtlessly selfish Magic Johnson for refusing to die. “People just think it’s not a big deal. It is. AIDS kills.” His eyes seemed to add a bitter “everyone except stupid Magic Johnson. It reminded me of the South Park episode where Cartman contracts the virus while getting his tonsils out and is pissed off because no one comes to his AIDS benefit or will give him any perks. “It’d be one thing if you had cancer, kid,” the airline stewardess says sympathetically, “then maybe we could do something for you.”

This entry was posted by Dawn Summers on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 1:35 pm and is filed under Television. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.