Ronald Reagan watched gay men die for six years and never said a f-cking word. His administration knew. His surgeon general begged to act. He deliberately let us die. The AIDS crisis killed over 20,000 Americans before Reagan said the word "AIDS" publicly for the first time. That was 1987. The epidemic had been raging for six years. Six goddamn years of funerals, of men wasting away in hospitals while their families were turned away at the door, of lovers burying lovers in their twenties, of a government that couldn't be bothered to give a shit. We know what was happening inside the White House because we have the transcripts. Press secretary Larry Speakes joked about AIDS with reporters in 1982. A reporter asked if Reagan was aware of the epidemic. Speakes laughed. "I don't have it, do you?" The room cracked up. Gay men were dying by the hundreds and the President's spokesperson was doing comedy bits. Reagan's surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, wanted to launch a public health campaign early in the crisis. Reagan's own people blocked him for years because the subject was too "controversial." Too controversial. A communicable disease wiping out an entire generation was too controversial to address because the victims were mostly gay. Reagan didn't just stay silent. His administration actively worked against the response. The CDC's budget requests for AIDS research were slashed. Public health officials were told to stay quiet. The word came from the top. Reagan was deeply tied to the religious right, and the religious right was gleeful about AIDS. Jerry Falwell called it "the wrath of God." Pat Buchanan, Reagan's communications director, wrote that AIDS was "nature's revenge on gay men." These were not fringe voices. These were people with offices in or near the White House. By the time Reagan finally gave a speech dedicated to AIDS in 1987, more than 20,000 Americans were dead. By the time he left office in 1989, the number was over 89,000. He never once visited an AIDS ward. He never met publicly with people living with the disease. The myth of Reagan as some kind of warm, genial grandfather figure has always been horseshit, but nowhere is it more obscene than when applied to his AIDS record. This was not a failure of leadership. It was a decision. Sick, dying gay men were politically useful to his coalition as objects of contempt. Keeping them that way was the point. Reagan left office with a 63 percent approval rating. He was celebrated as a hero of American conservatism. He got a national airport named after him. He got a f-cking aircraft carrier. And tens of thousands of people who should be in their sixties and seventies right now are in the ground instead, because the President of the United States decided their lives weren't worth a press conference. Remember that the next time someone tells you Reagan was one of the greats. He wasn't. He was a monster.
She arrived in Vienna in 1622 and immediately learned German, dismissed most of her Italian servants rather than importing her own court, and set about making the Habsburgs a centre of musical culture. During her tenure, the Imperial court in Vienna became one of the centres of European Baroque music. She introduced opera and ballet to the Habsburg court, beginning a tradition of attending performances during imperial family celebrations in 1625 for which a large wooden hall was built at the Hofburg. The tradition she established shaped Viennese musical culture for the century that followed. She had grown up in Mantua, one of the great Renaissance courts of Italy, been educated in a Gonzaga monastery in languages, history, music, and painting from the age of ten, and was betrothed twice before Ferdinand II's envoy arrived in 1621. The marriage worked, despite Ferdinand being twenty years her senior. They had no children, but she became genuinely close to all his stepchildren, particularly with the youngest one, the Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, in whom she formed a taste for art and literature. When the War of the Mantuan Succession broke out in 1628 and imperial forces sacked her homeland, she was Empress of the court that had ordered it. The sources do not record what she felt about that. When Ferdinand died in 1637 she withdrew to convent life but remained at court, arranged the marriage of her great-niece to her stepson Ferdinand III, and ran an extensive correspondence with Italian and Austrian relatives until the end. Her heart was removed after her death and placed beside her husband's tomb. Her body was buried in the Discalced Carmelite monastery she had founded herself. Died on this day in 1655, Eleonora Gonzaga, Holy Roman Empress. She brought Italy to Vienna, and Vienna has been musical ever since. Follow History Roadshow for a new untold story every day.
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So how is Trump's Great American State Fair going?.... - The first night, half the people walked out during Trump's speech - Very few people are attending - The power keeps going out - There's a Confederate flag problem - Several of the "state expos" never opened because many states refused to participate in this MAGA shitshow - Most of the food had to be thrown out and all of the ice cream melted because of the power outages - When there was food available it was outrageously expensive - There is one ride, the Ferris Wheel - Most of the time the Ferris Wheel isn't working because the power keeps going out, even though the ride has a generator - The gondolas on the Ferris Wheel are glassed in making them little hotboxes in the summer heat so no one wants to ride - There are a lot of displays featuring Turning Point USA - Plenty of pictures of Trump everywhere and a small mockup of his stupid arch - It keeps raining - Oh, and a guy in an Uncle Sam costume got arrested for jerking off in broad daylight in front of a female acrobatic act In other words, Trump's sad little fair is a complete disaster. And I just love that for him. Good job MAGA. This is your shitshow. ETTD
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