The Triumph of Nancy Reagan Karen Tumulty (motivational novels .TXT) 📖

administration and indicated that he thought the existing levels of government funding to fight the disease were adequate. “It was clear that there was sort of muted silence about things, and a complete lack of the use of the bully pulpit to sound the alarm,” Fauci said when I interviewed him more than three decades later. Not until the spring of 1987 did Ronnie give a major speech about AIDS. By that time, the disease had already struck 36,058 Americans, of whom 20,849 had died.

The Reagan administration’s unwillingness to recognize and confront the AIDS epidemic has gone down in history as one of the deepest and most enduring scars on its legacy. Those who would defend Ronnie and Nancy insist that it was not the result of deep-seated bigotry on their part against homosexuals. Coming from Hollywood, the Reagans had many acquaintances who were gay, and they were comfortable in their company. Nancy, in particular, counted numerous gay men among her closest confidants. She was on the phone nearly daily with her friend Jerry Zipkin, the New York society gadabout. Her decorator Ted Graber slept in the White House with his partner, possibly the first acknowledged same-sex couple to do so. She was also sensitive to the specific dangers that gay men faced in society. When author Truman Capote was arrested in Anaheim for disorderly conduct in the early 1980s, Nancy put in a frantic late-night call to Deaver, and begged him to find a way to get the renowned author freed. “Jail will kill him,” she told Deaver, who prevailed upon Meese to pull some strings and secure Capote’s release.

Family friend Doug Wick, a Hollywood producer, recalls that when he got married in 1986, news that Nancy would be at the wedding brought “both great curiosity and some ill will” among his liberal friends. Patricia Resnick, a lesbian who had written the 1980 hit movie 9 to 5, decided to put the first lady on the spot at the reception by asking her to dance. Resnick was tipsy and did it on a bet. Nancy took Resnick’s hand and said, “Only if you lead.” Wick felt proud of Nancy as he watched the two women do a slow box step to the jazz standard “Embraceable You.” He hoped that Nancy had changed the perceptions of some in his circle who misunderstood her.

As far back as 1978, Ronnie had been willing to risk his political capital with social conservatives by opposing a California ballot initiative that would have barred gays and lesbians from teaching in the state’s public schools. His opposition helped sink the ballot measure. But Ronnie also held a religious belief that homosexuality was sinful. In the spring of 1987, he discussed the AIDS epidemic with biographer Edmund Morris and said that “maybe the Lord brought down this plague,” because “illicit sex is against the Ten Commandments.” Privately, Ronnie also trafficked in homophobic stereotypes, as did those around him. Press spokesman Larry Speakes recalled that after Ronnie’s weekly shampoo, the president would flick his wrist and tell aides in a lisping voice, “I washed my hair last night, and I just can’t do a thing with it.” Speakes wrote admiringly: “He does a very good gay imitation. He would pretend to be annoyed at someone and say, ‘If those fellows don’t leave me alone, I’ll just slap them on the wrist.’ ”

Speakes himself cracked a homophobic joke when reporter Lester Kinsolving asked him during an October 15, 1982, press briefing whether the president had any reaction to reports that six hundred people had contracted the “gay plague.” It was the first public question the White House had received on the subject. The press secretary’s response: “I don’t have it. And you? Do you?” The reaction from the assembled reporters was laughter. At subsequent briefings over the next two years, Kinsolving, who was considered a gadfly, continued to press the White House spokesman about AIDS, only to be met with dismissive wisecracks questioning the reporter’s own sexual orientation. And the White House press corps continued to find these exchanges hilarious.

In October 1986 the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward reported that during a meeting with his national security advisers, Ronnie had made note of Libyan leader Mu‘ammar Gadhafi’s partiality for eccentric clothing and quipped: “Why not invite Gadhafi to San Francisco, he likes to dress up so much?” To which Secretary of State George Shultz replied: “Why don’t we give him AIDS!” According to Woodward, others around the table thought this was extremely amusing. San Francisco officials demanded an apology, both to the city and to people infected with the disease.

As was the case with many Americans during the early years of the epidemic, the Reagans’ practical understanding of AIDS was colored by fear, ignorance, and scientific uncertainty. One day, when hairdresser Robin Weir was making one of his twice-a-week visits to the White House, Nancy inadvertently took a sip from his water glass. Afterward, she went to White House physician John Hutton in a panic, worried that she might have contracted the disease. Hutton tried to reassure her that it was impossible to get AIDS that way, but she wasn’t satisfied. “How do you know?” Nancy demanded. “How do you know?” Weir died in 1993 at the age of forty-five from what his obituaries described as a combination of colitis, bacterial sepsis, and a heart attack, all three of which are often associated with AIDS.

But it is also clear that Nancy became attuned to the seriousness of the epidemic earlier than the president did—in part, because her son, Ron, was seeing it up close. “I’m in New York, I’m dancing, I know people who are HIV positive. Dancers, fashion designers, people like that. Doria was working at Andy Warhol’s Factory [his studio] at the time, and she’s in contact with a whole range of people. So we are well aware of what’s going on and how serious it is,” Ron said. “I began speaking to my mother about it. My mother