Gabriel's Horn

Gabriel Rotello rips Andrew Sullivan a new heiny, as if his hadn't already been ripped enough from his well-publicized proclivities.

Here's his Huffington Post article:

It's Gay Pride Month. That means parades, floats, garden parties -- and more articles by Andrew Sullivan proclaiming the 'end of AIDS.'

It's one of the most shockingly irresponsible claims ever made in the context of gay men and AIDS, and it represents a mindset whose consequences couldn't be more tragic.

The current issue of Seattle's The Stranger contains Andrew's latest installment -- a historical essay about the year 1996 entitled 'The Plague Ends.' It describes how the AIDS epidemic for gay men supposedly vanished that year when combination therapies appeared and began saving countless lives.

Andrew recounts that he wrote a similar piece for the Sunday New York Times as early as 1996, the year in question. He complains that back then he was ''flayed alive" by AIDS prevention activists for writing a piece that said "the obvious:" that the new medications were "an end to AIDS-as-plague."

Another bit:

For the rising generation of gay men, the AIDS epidemic could have ended, except for the occasional stray infection here and there.

But that's not what happened. The opposite happened.

As the meds came into use, people began celebrating. Opinion leaders -- most notably Andrew Sullivan -- recklessly proclaimed the "end of AIDS" in major venues like The New York Times. Mainstream journalists took their cue and largely dropped the subject.

Basically, Gabe is scolding Sully for repeating what he did before, in essence, ignoring anything but his own self-centered experience, i.e, 'I got my meds, so everything's fine now.'

You should go to HP and read the rest, including comments like this:

"Sullivan is the ultimate narcissist. He only turned against Bush when Bush supported a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage -- the issue on which Andrew made his name -- as if there weren't countless other reasons to oppose him.

Sullivan wrote nasty sarcastic remarks about "bears" in San Francisco. Then he turned into a bear himself and declared bears the most authentic type of gay men. He started using testosterone and wrote an article full of scientific inaccuracies.

I could go on. The point is he never sees beyond the tip of his own nose. The only reason he receives as much attention as he does is his role as a freak -- a conservative, religious gay man. He can present himself as "mainstream," but don't make the mistake of looking at pictures of his anatomy on various websites. You will see that he really is a freak."

And in the interests of full disclosure, back in the 89-91 era of Sully's rise to fame as the token gay pontificator of the reichwing (during which time he did nothing to assist in the fight against AIDS, while Rotello was helpful in organizing fundraisers, promoting AIDS activism and prevention, and a lot more), I was working for Rotello at the now-infamous OutWeek magazine. Here's Gabriel's mini-history, with a few covers.