Two Great Slap Downs
Two great verbal slap downs.
[We’ll come to the second later, but we admit that after hours of research we’ve been unable to find the details and precise wording.]
At a time when so many members of Congress have bartered away their shame, few living Americans actually heard or saw what may still be the most stinging putdown in Congressional history.
In 1950, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin charged that “hundreds” of “known communists” were secretly working their nefarious wiles in the State Department. The godfather of the “Red Scare” went on to argue that dirty “commies” had infiltrated every aspect of American life and, in 1954, charged that the U.S. Army was “soft on communists,” a provocation that laid the groundwork for his role as Chairman of the Senate Government Operations Committee’s Army investigation.
McCarthy, lacking any sense of senatorial politesse, loudmouthed and widely believed to be an alcoholic and drug abuser – if not addicted to morphine, seemed capable of lying at the drop of the blank papers he waived in public claiming they were lists of communists.
Ever grandstanding, he screamed at witnesses and declared that one highly decorated general was a “disgrace” to his uniform. During his committee’s “investigation” of the Army, McCarthy took reckless aim at Frederick G. Fisher, a young associate in the law firm of Jospeh N. Welch, a soft-spoken attorney representing the Army. On June 9, 1954, McCarthy declared – without proof – that Fisher was a long-time member of an organization that was a “legal arm of the Communist Party.”
Struggling to keep his composure, Welch came to the defense of his associate:
“Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to the Harvard Law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant career with us. … Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad… It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty I would do so. I like to think I am a gentleman, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me. Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
The audience in the Senate hearing room burst into wild applause.
Within a week the McCarthy Army hearing was closed; six months later, the ruthless senator was censured – 67-22 - for acts that “tended to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute, to obstruct the constitutional processes of the Senate, and to impair its dignity.”
The bloviating, lying McCarthy was undone.
Overnight, his popularity evaporated.
He spiraled into his addictions and died from complications due to alcoholism and hepatitis on May 2, 1957 at the Bethesda Naval Hospital – still a United States senator.
While History will forever remember McCarthy as a lying bully, Joseph Welch’s blunt rejoinder is enshrined in glory.
On March 3, 1988 – before half of all Americans today were even born, a sixteen-year-old testified before President Ronald Reagan’s Commission on the HIV Epidemic;
“My name is Ryan White. I am sixteen years old. I have hemophilia, and I have AIDS.
“When I was three days old, the doctors told my parents I was a severe hemophiliac, meaning my blood does not clot. Lucky for me, there was a product just approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It was called Factor VIII, which contains the clotting agent found in blood.
“While I was growing up, I had many bleeds or hemorhages in my joints which make it very painful. Twice a week I would receive injections or IV's of Factor VIII which clotted the blood and then broke it down. A bleed occurs from a broken blood vessel or vein. The blood then had nowhere to go so it would swell up in a joint. You could compare it to trying to pour a quart of milk into a pint-sized container of milk.
“The first five to six years of my life were spent in and out of the hospital. All in all I led a pretty normal life. Most recently my battle has been against AIDS and the discrimination surrounding it. On December 17, 1984, I had surgery to remove two inches of my left lung due to pneumonia. After two hours of surgery the doctors told my mother I had AIDS. I contracted AIDS through my Factor VIII which is made from blood. When I came out of surgery, I was on a respirator and had a tube in my left lung. I spent Christmas and the next thirty days in the hospital. A lot of my time was spent searching, thinking and planning my life.
“I came face to face with death at thirteen years old. I was diagnosed with AIDS: a killer. Doctors told me I'm not contagious. Given six months to live and being the fighter that I am, I set high goals for myself. It was my decision to live a normal life, go to school, be with my friends, and enjoying day to day activities. It was not going to be easy.
“The school I was going to said they had no guidelines for a person with AIDS. The school board, my teachers, and my principal voted to keep me out of the classroom even after the guidelines were set by the I.S.B.H. Indiana State Board of Health], for fear of someone getting AIDS from me by casual contact. Rumors of sneezing, kissing, tears, sweat, and saliva spreading AIDS caused people to panic.
“We began a series of court battles for nine months, while I was attending classes by telephone. Eventually, I won the right to attend school, but the prejudice was still there. Listening to medical facts was not enough. People wanted one hundred percent guarantees. There are no one hundred percent guarantees in life, but concessions were made by Mom and me to help ease the fear. We decided to meet them halfway:
Separate restrooms
No gym
Separate drinking fountains
Disposable eating utensils and trays
“Even though we knew AIDS was not spread through casual contact. Nevertheless, parents of twenty students started their own school. They were still not convinced. Because of the lack of education on AIDS, discrimination, fear, panic, and lies surrounded me:
I became the target of Ryan White jokes
Lies about me biting people
Spitting on vegetables and cookies
Urinating on bathroom walls
Some restaurants threw away my dishes
My school locker was vandalized inside and folders were marked FAG and other obscenities
“I was labeled a troublemaker, my mom an unfit mother, and I was not welcome anywhere. People would get up and leave so they would not have to sit anywhere near me. Even at church, people would not shake my hand…
“It was difficult, at times, to handle; but I tried to ignore the injustice, because I knew the people were wrong. My family and I held no hatred for those people because we realized they were victims of their own ignorance. We had great faith that with patience, understanding, and education, that my family and I could be helpful in changing their minds and attitudes around. Financial hardships were rough on us, even though Mom had a good job at G.M. The more I was sick, the more work she had to miss. Bills became impossible to pay. My sister, Andrea, was a championship roller skater who had to sacrifice too. There was no money for her lessons and travel. AIDS can destroy a family if you let it, but luckily for my sister and me, Mom taught us to keep going. Don't give up, be proud of who you are, and never feel sorry for yourself.
“After two and a half years of declining health, two attacks of pneumocystis, shingles, a rare form of whooping cough, and liver problems, I faced fighting chills, fevers, coughing, tiredness, and vomiting. I was very ill and being tutored at home…
“My life is better now. At the end of the school year (1986-87), my family and I decided to move to Cicero, Indiana. We did a lot of hoping and praying that the community would welcome us, and they did. For the first time in three years, we feel we have a home, a supportive school, and lots of friends. The communities of Cicero, Atlanta, Arcadia, and Noblesville, Indiana, are now what we call ‘home.’ I'm feeling great. I am a normal happy teenager again. I have a learner's permit. I attend sports functions and dances. My studies are important to me. I made the honor roll just recently, with 2 A's and 2 B's. I'm just one of the kids, and all because the students at Hamilton Heights High School listened to the facts, educated their parents and themselves, and believed in me.
“I believe in myself as I look forward to graduating from Hamilton Heights High School in 1991….”
Ryan White died on April 8, 1980, just weeks before he was to graduate from Hamilton Heights.
At his insistence – “When I die, please don’t bury me in Kokomo” – and because of the way he had been treated his hometown, he was buried in Cicero, the town that had accepted him.
No. Ryan White’s “When I die, please don’t bury me in Kokomo” was not the other great verbal slap down.
Ryan White became the living face of HIV/AIDS. His public bravery in confronting the “haters” and those who would “otherize” him earned the respect of President Ronald and First Lady Nancy Reagan, Surgeon General C. Everett Kopp, basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Olympic superstar Greg Louganis. President Reagan’s tribute to Ryan White in The Washington Post was a mile marker in the history of HIV/AIDS treatment in the United States.
[EDITORS’ NOTE: Here’s where things get a bit blurry and the quote might the slightly imprecise.]
At some point, either while Ryan White was still fighting the good fight and educating America about HIV/AIDS or after his death, someone – perhaps motivated by fear, maybe speaking from ignorance or just plain hatred of gay men (HIV/AIDS was called “the gay man’s disease”) or sex workers or people who were just plain sexually active (it was transmitted by unprotected sex, both straight and gay) – railed against those infected with what was then a “death sentence.” As the speaker’s vitriol rolled like a thunderstorm over his audience and his attacks became more venomous, an anonymous someone from the crowd shouted, “What about Ryan White?” or “Tell that to Ryan White!”
Silence.
A simple question based on science, understanding, empathy, and genuine kindness.
“What about Ryan White?”
A simple statement based on science, understanding, empathy, and genuine kindness.
“Tell that to Ryan White!”
One of the two greatest verbal slap downs in American History.
The next year will be filled with bile and vitriol, fear and ignorance, prejudice and the most un-Christ-like arrogance and delusional dishonesty.
Let’s listen!
Let’s listen to our better angels asking the grievance-driven caterwauler two questions: “Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” and “What about Ryan White? Have you learned anything from his history?”
On October 30, 2009 President Obama signed The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Treatment Extension Act of 2009. Obama announced plans to remove a ban on travel and immigration to the U.S. by individuals with HIV. Obama called the 22-year ban a decision “rooted in fear rather than fact.”
[EDITORS’ NOTE: We spent hours searching for press accounts of the incident in which the – either fear-filled or hate-spewing – speaker was challenged. Although we have been unable to find citations and the precise quote – “What about Ryan White?” or “Tell that to Ryan White!” - more than forty years later, we still remember the impact those words had on us. We’re committed to researching what we write. Sometimes absolute precision is impossible. We ask for you kindness and understanding.]