Startling Revelation: Hollywood not Best Source of Reliable News

I did something I probably should not have done this week. I watched most of The Dallas Buyers Club. It’s a movie about AIDS victim Ron Woodroof, who ran a company that distributed non-approved AIDS drugs to sick people.

I shouldn’t have watched it because over and over, nudity kept popping up. You can fast-forward when that happens, but little glimpses are still in your head afterward. Not helpful. Oh, well. I will keep trying to improve.

Anyway, as entertainment goes, it’s an excellent movie. As infotainment, not so much. It turns out there is a lot of BS in the film.

In the movie, Woodroof is an oilfield electrician who rides in rodeos in his spare time. He is fiercely heterosexual. He hates gays. He hates all minorities. He threatens to beat up the doctor who diagnoses him with AIDS. Over time and out of necessity, he develops relationships with gay men, and first thing you know, he’s a passionate advocate for the cause of gay AIDS sufferers.

I checked a few things out, because the movie seemed very slanted to me. Big Pharma in bed with the FDA, trying to kill people with poisonous AZT and suppressing cheaper medicines that worked better. Does anyone seriously think that happened? Also, who rides bulls while working full-time as an electrician? Does it work that way in Texas? Can you tell your boss you need to clock out early so you can break your collarbone riding El Diablo? I doubt it. Finally, movie Woodroof contracted AIDS from straight sex. How realistic is that?

Here are the actual facts.

1. Ron Woodroof was gay. He married three women, but he also had sex with men. His doctor says he was gay. A nurse he worked with says he was gay. The man was gay. The only person who insists he was straight is a screenwriter who didn’t know him well.

2. Ron Woodroof was not homophobic, according to people who knew him. It’s hard to be homophobic and gay and have any kind of social life.

3. Ron Woodroof did not ride in rodeos. The movie people put that in to make him look like a scrappy guy used to fighting bigger opponents. That’s what they say, but they also put it in to make him look butch.

4. Ron Woodroof did not have a tumultuous friendship with a transvestite named Rayon. This person never existed.

5. The FDA tolerated buyers’ clubs for a long time, and they only stepped in when profiteering became a problem. They even let Ron Woodroof keep importing a banned medication for his own use.

I read this stuff, and I wondered why the movie people insisted Woodroof was straight. Then I saw where someone said they did it to prevent The Dallas Buyers Club from becoming a “gay movie.” WHAM. That explains everything. If a movie looks too gay, most people will feel like they can’t relate to it, so they won’t go. There are exceptions, but Hollywood likes sure things (hello, sequels and remakes), so why take a chance?

Thinking about that, I realized there was more to it than that. They wanted AIDS to look like a heterosexual disease, in order to generate support for victims. Problem: AIDS has never been a major heterosexual disease, except for women who sleep with gay men or intravenous drug users. This is why black heterosexual women make up a significant number of AIDS victims. Many have sex with closeted gay men. It’s easy for women to get AIDS from straight sex, but it’s just about impossible for a man.

I looked it up. If you’re a heterosexual man who doesn’t share needles, you have, essentially, no chance of getting AIDS. Millions of people have died from AIDS. I couldn’t find a single example of an American heterosexual white male who got it from a woman. If examples exist, they are flukes, like male calico cats. Straight men can get all sorts of venereal diseases. AIDS is one you don’t have to worry about.

A lot of black “heterosexual” men get AIDS, but it appears likely they get it from sex with other men. Black men don’t like admitting they’re gay, so they lie to people who gather statistics.

Here’s something amazing: if you look at a 2010 chart that show how AIDS affects different types of people, heterosexual white males who don’t shoot up aren’t listed. I looked at it several times, because I was sure I was missing something. They’re not listed because they don’t exist in numbers large enough to put on graphs. It would be like listing animals that fly by group and having a bar for snails.

Yes, the chart does have a bar for black heterosexual men. It lists 2700 new infections and none for whites. Do you seriously believe that? Are white men really that much more conscientious about “protection”? No. We are not. If protection were the issue, we would still have a significant number of cases, and we don’t. The black “heterosexual” men on the chart are gays and drug users who lie.

They’re not the only ones who can’t face the truth. You can see the denial mindset at work if you look at statistics. Gay men aren’t called “gay men.” They’re called “MSM.” This means “men who have sex with other men.” Even the professionals can’t bring themselves to say “gay.” If having sex with other men doesn’t make you gay, WHAT DOES? Collecting Ethel Merman records?

By the way, I’m not talking about charts created by Jerry Falwell, Jr. I’m talking about government charts. We all know how government employees and medical people lean left. This is not right wing or Christian propaganda. Straight white men were excluded by people who have powerful motivation to include us.

What does this mean? That we should be happy gays and junkies are getting AIDS? Of course not. But no one likes to be lied to. Systematically. Deliberately.

Man, the world is crazy. Next thing you know, the dishonesty will find its way into documentaries, and we may even see people using CGI to create drowning polar bears to convince audiences global warming is real.

No, that could never happen.

It’s very unfortunate that people who create fact-based fiction make so little effort to let the public know what they lie about. Sometimes they do a lot of damage. People who watched Cinderella Man came away thinking Max Baer was a murderous anti-Semite. In reality, he was a great guy and a supporter of Jews, and he put the Star of David on his fighting trunks.

That brings me to Milton. I am still not done with Paradise Lost. It only read two or three pages per day. I need to get on with it. I’ve decided I don’t like it for two reasons: 1. Milton is a boring, incredibly pedantic showoff, and 2.) people should not make up Biblical history, because it tends to become doctrine. Milton wrote a fact-based work of fiction, and he had no right to do it. It’s unfortunate if you write a deceptive movie about AIDS. It can be blasphemy, apostasy, or heresy if you write a deceptive poem about God.

Milton was extremely bright, and he wanted people to know it. He twisted and bent the English language into Baroque shapes it didn’t need to be bent into. He reminds me of the little black kids who appear on talent shows and do all sorts of non-helpful vocal acrobatics while singing Whitney Houston numbers. Okay. You’re talented. But now I’m bored and annoyed, and you’ve killed the pace of the song, so what good has the showing off done?

Shakespeare was a better writer than Milton, and he did not beat the reader or listener over the head with his genius. He knew the difference between a work of fiction and an Olympic event. And he was not boring. And he had a great sense of humor. Milton was a humorless crank who craved admiration. You can have him.

Guess who wrote the play that contains the words, “brevity is the soul of wit”? Not Milton. That probably infuriated him.

If I want to see people do amazing things, I’ll go watch Chinese acrobats. I don’t read literature in order to be impressed. Milton turned his poem into a circus act, and on top of that, he’s long-winded. You don’t have to use three pages to describe every action in the story. Just say, “The sun went down,” not, “The gleaming orb of Helios, its glorious substance spent on teeming fields of indebted posies, summoned forth its gilded chariot and blah blah blah shut up already.”

I read a little bit of the next book on my list, Pride and Prejudice, because I was stuck somewhere with nothing to do, and I happened to have an Amazon sample on my phone. It looks like it will be more entertaining than Milton, although it does have “chick lit.” written all over it. I already dislike it, but I will be able to tolerate it.

I may have read it before. Who knows? Not the kind of book that changes your life and makes a lasting impression.

This is the view from here, as of Friday morning. I’ve mentioned two books and one movie, and I can’t recommend any of them. Shakespeare, however, gets two thumbs up.