It's also wrong that Reagan didn't utter the word "AIDS" until 1987. Any reporter who bothered to check facts would find that Reagan discussed AIDS funding in a 1985 press conference, just for starters. But let's turn that around on the rest of Washington. Does that mean no reporter asked Reagan about AIDS in the 1984 presidential debates? And that every interview President Reagan granted to a national or local media outlet failed to solicit Reagan's opinions on AIDS until 1985? Using this phony-baloney spin line - that federal policy hinges exclusively on the presidential bully pulpit - is an exercise in liberal hyperbole over hard data."
The original book criticizes then-president Reagan, but also the media (specifically including the NYT) and elements of the medical establishment.
It also gets into controversies within the gay establishment, such as whether to make a fuss about the problem (which could attract attention and lead to "outing" of people), and whether to close bathhouses as health risks.
From the wikipedia page:
Journalist Brian Montopoli of Columbia Journalism Review in 2005 labeled MRC "just one part of a wider movement by the far right to demonize corporate media" rather than "make the media better." Additionally, Montpoli wrote that "false equivalence is at the very root of MRC’s beliefs."
2 - nor does a record of funding disprove reagan's intentional oversight; by 1992 aids was the #1 cause of death for US men ages 25-44 [1] and by 1994 the #1 cause of death for all americans age 25-44 [1]; the funding was wildly insufficient to mount a proper response. And were it not for reagan's homophobia and bigotry, a more vigorous response could reasonably have saved many more lives
3 - while it is true that federal policy doesn't hinge exclusively on what the president says, nice attempt to change the goals. The point was not that the federal government and medical establishment -- despite reagan -- did both their job and their moral duty, but that he intentionally hampered the response. I repeat: it's indisputable that if a disease affecting, well, reagan supporters had killed 20 thousand americans it would have garned a much more vigorous response, one which could be triggered and pushed by the president himself. For example, see the improvement in response under Clinton. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that AIDS was a priority under a president who isn't a homophobe.
4 - brent bozell is a proud homophobe; what a surprise that he manages to find supposed evidence -- though you shouldn't believe a thing he says without consulting a primary source -- finding that reagan didn't intentionally fail a group of americans reagan despised
[1] http://aids.gov/hiv-aids-basics/hiv-aids-101/aids-timeline/
edit because i forgot the link
A brief history mostly off the top of my head
1 - reagan didn't care at all about aids until an actor friend of his died of it;
2 - the strong perception within the fda was that reagan didn't care about aids / didn't want anything done about it;
3 - reagan allowed his staff to delete a mention of ryan white from a speech;
4 - reagan didn't mention aids publicly until mid 1987
5 - act-up, amongst others, fought with the fda about not just glacial drug approval processes, but also the fda denying access to experimental therapies even to patients without other therapeutic options;6 - I don't remember this as well, but I believe hiv patients also had to fight the fda for early-ending of clinical trials, because they were insisting that people taking placebos should basically die
So some of this is similar to why many gay people of the right age hate Ed Koch, but an aggressive intervention by the reagan administration might have saved many lives.
[1] http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/Reagan-s-AID...