by k3nt » Fri Mar 16, 2007 8:32 am
The point is, AIDS didn't ravage the US population. Why not? Largely because the AIDS "hysteria" got people to seriously work on what to do about it. Mass media coverage and all that. We had to cut through the inherent embarrassment of talking about anal sex and oral sex and all the other kinds of sex -- in public, in the media, again and again and again. "What about oral sex but he doesn't come in your mouth?" "What about rimming?" All those questions were actually discussed, ad nauseum. That's not an easy thing to persuade our rather puritan media to do. (Janet Jackson's nipple! Eek!!) You needed to have a massive campaign to fight through our tendency to avoid icky subjects in the mass media. We had that, and it worked. Yes it went overboard somewhat, but if it saved a couple hundred thousand or a couple million people's lives, then it was well worth it. Wasn't it?