
Johnson and “Johnson”
ON NOVEMBER 7, 1991 AIDS finally became national news. Despite the massive efforts of AIDS activists for over a decade to educate the public and the media, only a few stories had broken through. The deaths of Rock Hudson and Liberace were treated largely as circulation-boosting scandals by the tabloids; the death of Ryan White was a tragic human-interest story, not unlike the fate of a child fallen into a well. But during an afternoon press conference—called just as the Thomas-Hill affair began to lose its urgency, just as neo-Nazi David Duke was achieving legitimacy with appearances on Donohue