The GOP Didn’t Always Gaslight Away Pandemics At Their Conventions
Political conventions don’t often take place against the backdrop of a global pandemic that has claimed tens of thousands of American lives. But it is not unprecedented.
In the summer of 1992, the parties convened as the AIDS crisis was near its peak. The disease, like COVID now, was still a source of immense confusion and fright then. But it was also the subject of a burgeoning activist movement and the convention planners planned accordingly. Before Bill Clinton accepted the nomination in Madison Square Garden, two speakers infected with AIDS took the stage. One, Bob Hattoy, a friend of Clinton’s who had become an AIDS activist after he was afflicted with the disease, declared: “AIDS does not discriminate. But George Bush’s White House does.”
It was a groundbreaking moment, recalled Sean Strub, a long-time activist and writer who was friends with Hattoy. “I think it was inevitable that it would be addressed. It was not all inevitable that someone with HIV would be speaking.”