Apparently not. Back in 2008, there were rumors going around that Sen. Evan Bayh, the Democrat from Indiana, would be selected as Barack Obama‘s presidential running mate. He did not. But hey, let’s put him back in the news: At the 2010 Indiana Jefferson Jackson Day Dinner, Bayh made a joke about having AIDS! The Indiana Stonewall Democrats did not find it funny, and walked out.
Says Bayh during his speech:
I want to say how good it is to be home. I got into that airport and I don’t know about the rest of you but every time I fly into Indianapolis airport I look at that thing and I think to myself, “You know if it weren’t for Bart Peterson, this thing wouldn’t be here.”
[applause]
He was a great Mayor and I’m so proud of him and everybody that helped make his accomplishment possible.
So I’m walking through the airport and people were kinda being nice and making eye contact and a couple come up and say hello. This one person runs up all excited and I’m prepared to say “Hello,” and he says, “Senator Bayh! Senator Bayh!”
I said “Well, yes?” and he looked at me and said, “Do you have AIDS?”
[audible gasps]
I said, “Huh?”
He said, “Yeah. Do you have AIDS?”
I was dumbfounded. I didn’t know what to say.
He said, “I’ve got a letter I want to give you, do you have someone I can hand this to? Do you have an aide with you?”
[laughter]
So you never know what people are going to say.
[more laughter]
Many of you have asked me… You’ve got to be prepared for about anything, you know?
Okay kids, it’s now your turn to say whether the homos were overreacting, or life-threatening diseases can be turned into a punchline!
SteamPunk
I thought that was funny. It’s not like Bayh showed any sign of disgust about AIDS. He reacted the same way I would’ve if someone asked me that out of thin air: “Huh?”
ewe
There is never ever any reason ever to make a joke about AIDS. AIDS is not funny and no joke about it is or was ever acceptable. If you think so, then you did not experience the travesties of loss during the last decades. It is unacceptable. I don’t hear these same people ever cracking jokes about Cancer. That would be unacceptable as well. Furthermore i do not even think this happened. I think he made it up. He is a homophobe who will not even acknowledge that this upsets many who lived through a time of overwhelming loss, a time that defined many of us, people his own age who did not sail in carefree young adulthood as Bayh obviously did. He must say that he did not realize that he was being offensive or he should leave public office. His dark arrogance only proves he comes from privilege and entitlement. It is a disgrace. It is A DISGRACE. It is thoughtless to the memory of those that left this world in such pain and agony. It is unacceptable and it always will be to joke about terminal illness with such light and folly. He is a disgrace. Please do not discount the pain of those who only feel grief. I really do not need to hear commenters wave off an entire people and their past because AIDS has evolved to the status it holds right now.
delurker again
It’s kind of like that “South Park” episode where someone was marketing a diet plan or some such by telling people to get “AIDS.” Everyone was aghast until it was found out he was talking about “aides” as in “helpers.” I guess the point is Bayh should have left the comedy to the pros.
Joe
AIDS is contracted through peoples’ ignorance to the fact that thoughtless acts come with negative consequences. I’m not ruling out mother’s who give birth to HIV+ children, but it’s sad that women do subject children to that sad life of pills and hospital stays. Cancer has no definitive causes, and we can’t always control how we acquire it.
Jake the libertarian
You know, people with a sense of humor are much more attractive than whiny self important bitches… If we don’t learn to laugh at ourselves a little bit, then we will be a shrill and annoying as the right.
P.S. South Park officially declared AIDS funny several years ago. I relegate my proxy on all matters of humor to Trey Parker and Matt Stone.
Chandler In Las Vegas
It is a humorous recollection about confusing communication. Because the confusion was over AIDS/Aides is not a reason to get all pantie bunched. Sometimes a homophone is just a homophone.
Chandler In Las Vegas
@SteamPunk:
You have thin hair?
Why is that important?
Never mind…
Baxter
It wasn’t a joke about AIDS. He didn’t say “Hey guys, know what’s funny? Having AIDS lol!” It was a joke about mishearing things. As someone who chronically mishears what people are saying to me, usually in the weirdest possible way, I thought it was amusing. People need to get a grip.
j
You’re all underreacting. Except that Ewe guy, he’s overreacting. Balance never was queerty’s strong point…
DR
It was a poorly-delivered joke about a verbal misunderstanding. Why overreact?
ewe
@j: My personal experience is not an overreaction. I have no doubt you would think ActUp was an over reaction as well. So many of you idiots have not one fucking thing of value to offer.
ewe
@DR: No i do not believe it was a misunderstanding. People do not speak like that. They do not say “do you aides?” They say “do you have any aides?”. Bayh is not being honest and the laughs in the audience is even more appalling. He knows exactly who he is catering to.
ewe
@Joe: You sound like Jessie Helms. I got news for you, you filthy fuck. People who died in the eighties (and nineties for that matter) did not know that sex gave them HIV until after the fact. You scumbag.
tsmcl
@ewe: You are over reacting! My two best friends, who have AIDS, thought it funny. I thought it funny. I guess we just got the joke about misinterpreting something that was said where you didn’t.
Charlie-o
It didn’t particularly offend me, but practically everything else about Senator Bayh does. He’s not on our side or any side except the money side. As soon as he got elected, his wife started getting appointed at high salary to the board of directors for health insurance companies. So Senator Bayh dragged and dragged his feet on health care reform. I can’t figure why he decided not to run again – except that the trough is fuller for consultant/lobbyists.
Qjersey
Made me remember something.
I was working as a stock clerk (briefly) in 1983 when a woman came up to me and asked “Do you have AYDS?”
I gave her a horrified look, then she pointed at the box on the shelf that she just noticed and we both laughed.
AYDS (a diet product) soon changed its name or went off the market; don’t know which.
Cassandra
It was not a joke about having people to aid him. It is common knowledge that politicians have support staff, often called aides.
If someone had genuinely asked if any of his support staff were around, the question would not have been “Do you have aides” – which asks ‘do you have any assistants at all’, but “Is one of your aides around?”.
And while maybe the joke was invented by the person who ran up to him, if that person even existed, but it was uncouth of Senator Bayh to repeat it.
The joke involves a play on the pronunciation of his name – listen to the video, he pronounces his name as “bi”
So the setup is, “Senator Bi, Senator Bi, do you have Aids?”
As a pwa long-term survivor, the joke is offensive.
Petrov
Groups with no sense of humor: transexuals, lesbians, gay activists, teabaggers, biblethumpers, and accountants.
thedarkchariot
I don’t know. I didn’t really sense any malice there.
ewe
@tsmcl: you are a dismissive twit. Let me guess. You have black friends too right?
ewe
@Cassandra: Most of these people here make superficial friendships on facebook. They don’t get that this is no different than anti semites who diminish the horrors of the holocaust. They are dumbed down and historically empty. They will stick up for a known homophobe and go screw each other thinking that all they have to do is pop pills if anything unplanned occurs. They are as stupid as their enemies.
Cassandra
Ewe
You might be being a little hard on some folk – keeping in mind the general demographics of internet users, it is likely that a significant percentage here are really too young to remember a time before the protease inhibitors and the cocktail of meds that can now keep HIV stalemated but not cured.
They haven’t lived through the threats of mass quarantine camps, anti-gay protesters with their “GAY:Got Aids Yet” signs, and the frequency with which ordinary people made sick, cruel jokes about HIV/AIDS. They probably haven’t buried a dozen friends, or more.
If they were alive at in the 80’s, they were probably children who didn’t know that adults openly complained that they might get AIDS from drinking from a glass a gay person had used, even though it had been through the dishwasher, or see people cross the street to avoid someone who was noticably ill.
They didn’t live through times when nurses refused to touch AIDS patients, and politicians capitalized on HIV/AIDS hysteria to get elected, pass anti-gay legislation, and raise money.
They didn’t see the candlelight vigils that filled downtown SF and NY, didn’t realize how radical it was at first for so many people to actually care about what happened to gay men. They didn’t endure the gloating from homophobes and the deafening silence from the White House.
Or, maybe they just have no one in their lives that they care the slightest about, and therefore, can’t imagine what it is like to lose a friend or lover or family member or even acquaintance to a terrible and torturous disease.
christopher di spirito
Of course, Evan Bayh is a conservadem and as well as Hillary Clinton’s (every gay man’s surrogate mother) first choice for vice president in the 2008 presidential campaign.
Imagine if the outcome of the election had been different and this midwestern clown was the second most powerful man in the world?
Say what you will about Joe Biden, but he makes jokes about Dick Cheney — not AIDS.
merkin
Its not a joke in the sense of an invented story with a punchline. Presumably this is something that actually happened. But given the nature of the topic, its moronic to retell it at a big public function.
edgyguy1426
I don’t know why he thought this was an appropriate joke for any crowd, BUT EWE….calling people idiots, filthy fucks or dismissive twits, is not really a way to win people over to your point of view.
Cam
No. 11 · ewe said…
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@j: My personal experience is not an overreaction. I have no doubt you would think ActUp was an over reaction as well. So many of you idiots have not one fucking thing of value to offer.
and…
No. 13 · ewe
@Joe: You sound like Jessie Helms. I got news for you, you filthy fuck.
and…
No. 19 · ewe
@tsmcl: you are a dismissive twit.
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Ewe, what I find so facinating about people like you is that you get incredibly offended about something and decry the lack of sensitivity towards that issue, and then turn around and attack, name-call, and basically directly say things much worse than the origional issue you were offended over. Incredibly hypocritical if you ask me.
declanto
Senator Bayh is far removed from what would be considered reality by his constituents. He is a dynastic senator, having inherited the seat from his father, Birch Bayh. The system allows for this to occur, but his part is to be conservadem, the only kind of democrat that can be elected in Indiana, a rock-ribbed Repugnican state.