This has been floating around on the Internet for a while, but in honor of World AIDS Day (yesterday), it’s worth another look at this incredible transcript from an October 1982 White House press briefing. The entire exchange is, in retrospect, dark and utterly nauseating, with both aptly named press secretary Larry Speakes and a seemingly significant chunk of the White House press corps treating AIDS as a hilarious joke. (Deadly diseases are not funny, but diseases that primarily kill gays? Comedy gold.) And as Buzzfeed found, it went on like this for years.
