(Wild-eyed liberal radio host Mike Malloy denounced O'Donnell as only he can: "And then this freakish, Barbie-doll-looking-woman from Delaware -- where do these people come from?...These are robots, obviously. These are huge walking, farting dolls of some sort I guess.")
For "crazy" crap, Rosie's producers found a clip they said was "much more recent" than O'Donnell's chats with Bill Maher in 1996 -- but actually, it was from a C-SPAN interview on AIDS prevention programs from 1997. As summarized by the left-wingers at Talking Points Memo:
"A lot of the money that we're spending goes to things that we know will not prevent AIDS, but indeed will continue to spread the disease," she said. "A lot of our money goes to distribute condoms in high schools, and a lot of our money goes to distribute material that is literally pornographic." She said that individuals could bring their chance of getting AIDS down to almost zero if they didn't have sex outside of marriage, by having a monogamous marriage and by not using drugs that can spread HIV.
Rosie's producers (any many liberals) interpreted that statement as asserting that condoms don't prevent AIDS. But many social conservatives have tried to suggest over the years that prevention programs that encourage teens to have sex can simply lead to more sex (including "unprotected" sex).
It cannot be asserted it's scientifically wacky to suggest that keeping sex monogamous and avoiding injected drugs will prevent the spread of HIV.
If Rosie's crew had a right-winger to make trouble, they might rudely suggest that people who do not cruise night clubs for anonymous sex (gay or straight) and do not inject drugs into their system might resent being forced to subsidize other people's condoms and clean needles.
What really offends the left as "crazy" is that anyone would suggest the "lifestyle" (they hate that word) of homosexuality should be avoided:
"When somebody finds out that they're at high risk for heart disease, they cut out the fatty foods, they start exercising, they quit smoking. However, our approach to AIDS, when you're in a high risk behavior, is to eliminate the consequences so that you can continue in your lifestyle which brings about this disease," O'Donnell said.
Any social conservative opposing the sin of homosexuality and its promotion in government programs should avoid leaving the impression that AIDS is what homosexuals deserve, like a smoker would deserve lung cancer.
But O'Donnell's old clip still holds true today in the sense that liberals (and certainly the liberal media) categorically, almost religiously, refuse to allow the idea that people who contract AIDS may have in any way responsible for their own infection. Instead, liberals continue to assert dogmatically, as if they were scientifically accurate instead of politically correct, that everyone suffering from HIV is 100 percent a "victim," as if they caught a cold.
That kind of intimidation might be successful, but this is not a medical or scientific argument that journalists assess for accuracy. Despite the media's insistence that the AIDS debate is a scientific matter, they often offer a very emotional appeal.
