On NPR’s blog The Two-Way, NPR media reporter David Folkenflik recalled reporter Nina Totenberg’s July 8, 1995 TV outburst wishing disease and death on Sen. Jesse Helms: "I think he ought to be worried about the - about what's going on in the good Lord's mind, because if there's retributive justice, he'll get AIDS from a transfusion or one of his grandchildren will get it." In a new interview Tuesday, she declared her regrets:
When I spoke with her earlier today, Totenberg called her comments "dumb" and read from letters she had sent over the years saying so in reply to complaints about those remarks.
"It taught me a lesson about being careful," Totenberg said. "I haven't said anything that stupid on the air in 15 years."
....Today, Totenberg said she regrets those words, but that the context is worth noting. In arguing against funding for AIDS, Helms had said, "We've got to have common sense about a disease transmitted by people deliberately engaging in unnatural acts." He was talking about sex between gay men.
...Totenberg now says she was attempting to underscore the point that Helms' objection to federal funding for AIDS testing could lead the disease to spread widely among heterosexuals population and babies born to women who had HIV. But Totenberg concedes her comments represented a harsh and overly personalized way to make her point.
Folkenflik added that the other panelists on that week’s show – Charles Krauthammer, Tony Snow, and Carl Rowan also condemned Helms (without wishing death on him).
But it’s not accurate to say Helms objected to AIDS testing – he was objecting to more funding for the Ryan White Care Act of 1990, which was devoted to care for AIDS sufferers, not testing. Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby wrote against the Helms critics at that time:
According to the U.S. Public Health Service, the government will spend $2 billion this year on AIDS research and prevention - $2.7 billion, if you include funds earmarked for treatment. That compares with just $800 million allocated to heart disease. Yet AIDS will kill less than 2 percent of Americans who die this year, while heart disease will kill more than 33 percent.
In 15 years, AIDS has killed 270,000 Americans. Heart disease kills that many every 19 weeks. The disproportion is staggering. Is it logical - or fair - to be spending 3 1/2 times more money on AIDS than on heart disease, which kills 18 times as many people?
...This issue isn't new. In 1992, The Associated Press calculated that the U.S. government was spending about $79,000 for every American who died of AIDS as against only $7,300 for every death from cervical cancer, $6,300 for diabetes, $2,800 for breast cancer, $800 for prostate cancer and $600 for stroke. "There is more money going into AIDS," The AP was told by Dr. David Denhardt, chairman of biological sciences at Rutgers University, "than any rational distribution would come up with."
Was this the dumbest thing Totenberg said on TV? It's probably the meanest. Here's a few other humdingers that made our year-end Best of Notable Quotables issues over the years:
NPR's Nina Totenberg: “Now they’ve got this guy [General Jerry Boykin], who’s head of the intelligence section in the Defense Department, who’s being quoted as telling various groups, while he’s in uniform, that this [war] is a Christian crusade against Muslims....I mean, this is terrible, this is seriously bad stuff....I hope he’s not long for this world.”
Host Gordon Peterson: “You putting a hit out on this guy or what?...What is this, The Sopranos?”
Totenberg: “No, no, no....In his job, in his job, in his job, please, please, in his job.” – Exchange on Inside Washington, October 18, 2003.
"It seems to me that the modern Republican Party and its moderate wing are in a sort of, to use the psychobabble of the era, in an abusive relationship...and the moderates are the enablers and the conservatives are the abusers and they just got used to doing it that way and suddenly one member said, ‘I’m not going to take it anymore.’" – NPR’s Nina Totenberg on the defection of Senator Jim Jeffords, May 26, 2001 Inside Washington.
"Didn’t I say to you that we are marching off the cliff? Reason tells you we should stop this and get on with the business of governance. But there is precious little. I mean, I spent most of today and yesterday half on the phone while I was covering this thing, with Senators Republican and Democratic, and at the moment everybody’s fondest hope is that the two-week hiatus, between now and the new year, in that period impeachment will sink in and sanity will prevail and we’ll avoid a trial. But there are a lot of people that don’t want that to happen." -- NPR's Nina Totenberg, December 19, 1998 Inside Washington, the day of the House vote.
Host Tina Gulland: "Are we agreed generally that it was a plus week for Clinton in the sense that he was viewed as presidential and in charge of foreign policy?"
ABC and NPR reporter Nina Totenberg: "He was there in the middle of the desert. I mean, it was biblical!" -- Exchange on Inside Washington about Clinton's Middle East trip, October 29, 1994.
