imkittymyers at hotmail dot com
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
JUST SHUT UP & ACT
Lord, puh-LEEZE save us from bloviating actors. If it isn't BS ranting on about how stoopid the president is -- pst! those misspellings weren't really her fault y'know -- it's George Clooney trying to impress us with his whatever.
His latest blunder was claiming how it was really Hollywood that raised everyone's awareness of AIDS. In case you can't read it, that People mag is dated November 18, 1985; just one of dozens of periodicals at that time which featured AIDS related articles/stories.
Clooney's Oscar Speech
ABC didn't challenge Clooney's "smarts" by taking apart the factual (or were they merely rhetorical) particulars of his speech. Even when it could be read as insulting to the liberal news media. For example, Clooney claimed: "We were the first to shout about AIDS when it was just a whisper."
This was not a claim that would stand up to a newsman's scrutiny. The news media didn't whisper about AIDS. Newsweek (April 18) and Time (July 4) published AIDS cover stories in 1983. AIDS was a common news story in the 1980s, and it was presumed that Reagan was failing to do anything about it by reporters. How about Diane Sawyer's network? Consult Nexis. Here was ABC's "World News Tonight" on March 2, 1983, and reporter George Strait: "Unknown eighteen months ago, officials say AIDS has now become a national epidemic, claiming more than a thousand people and killing 418."
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