The other day was the anniversary of the first mainstream media mention of what we’d come to call AIDS. Forty-five years back, on July 3, 1981, the NYT ran a story headlined, “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals.” It wouldn’t be long before editors at the Times and other media outlets would be having meetings on how, in a G- or maybe PG-rated way, to describe certain sexual practices and why they might be relevant to this new disease.
I’m talking oral sex, anal sex, PIV sex, the gamut. Believe me when I tell you people sat around conference tables discussing anal sex. I was in a few of those meetings, or heard about them afterward.
Then came Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. She performed oral sex on him in the Oval Office! (“Oral in the Oval” — did anyone write that headline? If not, they missed an opportunity.) And she did that thing with the cigar! More meetings, more letters to the editor from parents mad because they had to explain a blowjob to their middle-school children. And I’d bet anything the kids already knew about them, but enjoyed seeing their parents stammer through the explanation.
Years later, it was #MeToo, and stories about forced sex, bad sex, guilty sex, and erections. So many erections, young women pulled down onto the lap of some creep and his boner, or having it rubbed up against her at a drinking fountain, or wherever. I was largely out of the game by then, and the previous meetings had taken away some of the scandalousness of describing sexual orientations and practices in what we always called “a family newspaper.” But I’m sure there might have been a few more meetings.
This week I saw a headline and thought, my how things have changed:
File that one under Things That Make Me Feel Old. And Platner is out, so his future sex crimes will be between him, the women involved and law enforcement.
What else today? Here’s Bret Stephens and his problem with democratic socialists:
A would-be U.S. senator, the Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, offered an alternative take on Michelle Obama’s famous line about going high when your opponent goes low: “When they go low, we don’t go high,” he said. “We take them to the mud and choke them out.” (El-Sayed is a doctor.)
Heavens to Betsy, let me clutch my pearls! When will these comfortable opinion-havers figure out that this is exactly what Democrats want to hear, after two years of the Trump administration? They don’t want Chuck Schumer’s strongly worded letters, they want choking in the mud, because that’s what the administration has already done to the Constitution. I swear, these people.
OK, then. The week, it limps to a close and a pretty good weekend awaits. Enjoy yours.
Brandon said on July 10, 2026 at 2:54 am
And I’d bet anything the kids already knew about them, but enjoyed seeing their parents stammer through the explanation.
I would’ve said, you already know, so there’s nothing to explain.
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David C said on July 10, 2026 at 5:44 am
I don’t necessarily want them choked completely out. Just enough so they’ve learned their lesson. Because I’m a liberal and I’m pro-education.
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Deborah said on July 10, 2026 at 10:19 am
For those who may not know like I didn’t until this morning, Graham Platner’s grandfather was Warren Platner a famous modernist architect. He designed this chair https://www.knoll.com/shop/en_us/dining-dining-chairs/platner-armchair/1562.html. And for those of you who have ever been to the Water Tower Place mall in Chicago, the entry sequence with the bouncy fountains between the escalators, that was designed by Warren Platner’s firm. Graham’s father is/was a Dartmouth educated lawyer and his mother owns an upscale restaurant near Acadia National Park. So he’s not what a lot of people thought, a working class, self made man.
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BigHank53 said on July 10, 2026 at 10:35 am
I don’t think it’s a real Bretbug column until he gets to the pearl-clutching.
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alex said on July 10, 2026 at 10:40 am
Brett Stephens’ concern trolling is probably earning him some kickbacks from AIPAC, but it’s some weak tea, especially when you consider that the people he once considered fringe kooks in his party now have what they’ve always wanted. He’s no doubt shitting himself that Red Scare agitprop no longer packs the punch that it once did.
Deborah, I was aware of the Platner family connection. My parents have some Warren Platner furniture. The upholstery on the chairs was originally blue wool but years ago my mom took them to an automotive upholsterer (no other upholsterer in town had any idea how to work with them) and had them redone in a sort of cocoa naugahyde. The fabric itself was in fine shape but the stuffing was degrading. I think it was the color called Lazuli on the Knoll web site.
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Suzanne said on July 10, 2026 at 11:03 am
Are any of these people ever self-made? Gov Braun here in Indiana claims so but his money came from running the factory that was started by his dad. Trump inherited tons of money, lost most of it but stayed wealthy. Tucker Carlson is a nepo baby. The Kennedy family had money behind them & still do. When the Obamas came on the scene, honest to god pull themselves up by the bootstraps kind of people, they were hated by so many.
I didn’t know this about Platner but I guess I am actually not all that surprised. The monied class can screw around and rarely pay the consequences of their folly. Graham Platner probably assumed he wouldn’t either because he never really had.
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Jakash said on July 10, 2026 at 1:28 pm
Bedbug Bret is at it again.
“Is there a rising Democrat who will give this speech — the one that says that Democrats stand for freedom and fairness, not radicalism and self-righteousness; the one that never disdains tradition even if it seeks to improve it; the one that knows that utopianism is no substitute for pragmatism, and that purity is not superior to compromise?”
Asking that question during the reign of the Teflon Dotard almost beggars belief.
“Never disdaining tradition” seems like a bit of a tell. Is it all right to disdain the “traditions” of slavery, Jim Crow, land-owning white men being the only eligible voters, rampant sexism, xenophobia, a fairy-tale belief in “trickle-down economics,” etc., etc., etc.?
Is there a political movement aside from MAGA that more clearly demolishes his concept that “purity is not superior to compromise,” at least when it comes to wielding power right now? The willingness of the “pure” Magats, along with the insufferably hypocritical Congresscritters and S.C. justices emboldened and yet terrified by them, to support anything an incompetent orange felon wants is what has gotten us where we are.
Plus, the calls for toned-down rhetoric from the left, when their guy has been the most vocal, prominent force ever for degrading discourse in this country, never cease to amaze. Be best, Bedbug!
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Jeff Gill said on July 10, 2026 at 2:05 pm
Deborah, thank you. I knew the last name rang a bell, but I hadn’t been motivated enough to look it up. Water Tower Place, duh.
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Deborah said on July 10, 2026 at 4:16 pm
Also, the oyster farm that Graham Platner and his wife run doesn’t have many customers, their main customer is his mother’s restaurant. So this is a guy who has probably always landed on his feet thanks to his family, which is fine, but how does this or anything else he’s done make him US Senate material?
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Deborah said on July 10, 2026 at 4:26 pm
I’ve been suffering from lower intestinal problems all day, and of course I think I have Clyclospora. I have been eating a lot of salads for the last few weeks, and they say it can take 2 weeks for it to show up. There are only 3 confirmed cases in New Mexico though, so it’s probably just something I ate last night. If this keeps up for the next couple of days (gross) I’ll go to an urgent care near us and call my Chicago Dr. There are lots of cases in Michigan now so be careful, wash your salad makings and fresh fruit well before eating.
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Sherri said on July 10, 2026 at 4:45 pm
I think Bretbug should write about Schrodinger’s Mitch, who seems to be both dead and alive, depending on who is observing him.
I work hard not to be too cynical, but the GOP makes it difficult. I’m going to be very suspicious if Mitch “lives” just long enough to avoid a special election to replace him. The GOP legislature took away the governor’s power to appoint a successor to finish the term, but they don’t even want a special election because they hate Rep. Thomas Massie so much, because he’s one of the few Republicans who doesn’t completely kowtow to Trump.
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Julie Robinson said on July 10, 2026 at 5:12 pm
Deborah, I sure hope it’s not that. We’ve eaten all our fresh fruits and veg and I think we’re going to wait a bit to buy more. Not a big fan of frozen peas etc, but this thing could take out frail eldsters.
I saw a funny Mitch McConnell meme, a supposed Proof of Life with him holding the Dewey Defeats Truman newspaper. Nothing at all about it is funny of course.
It’s 96° here and even the pool water is over 93°. Got in to swim laps and could only manage 10; just too ennervating. Go ahead and crow at me but we still don’t have winter and that wins every time.
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Icarus said on July 11, 2026 at 3:18 pm
imagine if the Dems had been able to pull off with RBG what the GOP is doing with McConnell?
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Jakash said on July 11, 2026 at 3:54 pm
Deborah,
Hope you’re feeling better! I thought you might find this interesting, if you don’t know about it.
Neil Steinberg’s blog post today is partly a shout-out to the Sun-Times’ architecture critic, Lee Bey, but then shifts to being about the word “flâneur.”
However, there’s a link to Bey’s recent column about a famous Frank Gehry-designed desk in the lobby of the Inland Steel Building in Chicago.
“A 7-ton glass security desk designed by the late renowned architect Frank Gehry for the Inland Steel Building is now up for auction online, with its consignor looking to get between $100,000 and $200,000 for the work. The blocky, 16-piece setup — dubbed “Icehenge” — has been a fixture in the building’s lobby since 2012.”
https://www.wbez.org/design/2026/07/07/loop-glass-desk-designed-frank-gehry-7-tons-auction-inland-steel-building
Meanwhile, we’re carefully washing our just-purchased head of red leaf lettuce and hoping for the best…
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Deborah said on July 11, 2026 at 4:07 pm
Tacky, tacky, tacky https://bsky.app/profile/sundaedivine.lol/post/3mqepashyb22l
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Deborah said on July 11, 2026 at 4:17 pm
I’m feeling better today, I think I just had plain old food poisoning from a ham sandwich I had the night before yesterday.
Jakash, I used to work in the Inland steel building, my workspace was on the third floor overlooking the Chagall mosaic mural. I only worked there a couple of years because the architecture firm I worked for moved to the Carson Pierre Scott building. That Frank Gehry desk came later, as I have no memory of it and you’d think I would have remembered it.
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Jeff Gill said on July 12, 2026 at 6:27 am
I don’t think any of us had Lindsey Graham dying on our July 2026 Bingo card.
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Kristen said on July 12, 2026 at 6:58 am
Good riddance to “No Spine” Lindsey Graham. I regret only that he popped his clogs before a comeuppance of biblical proportions. These sleaze bags always seem to slink away from any responsibility and full accounting of their wretched ways.
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Peter said on July 12, 2026 at 7:20 am
Trump gets all the luck. Being South Carolina, it was a long shot, but there was a chance that Lindsey would finally be taken down by a competent candidate. Now with Lindsey drop kicked out of this mortal coil, they can appoint an even bigger lickspittle, if that’s possible, to suck up to Fearless Leader.
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Jeff Gill said on July 12, 2026 at 8:10 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npyT6lBkOWA
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Deborah said on July 12, 2026 at 10:34 am
So Mitch and Lindsey are both dead now.
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alex said on July 12, 2026 at 10:58 am
Good things come in threes.
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Dorothy said on July 12, 2026 at 11:14 am
We need to stop saying Mitch McConnell is dead until it’s absolutely confirmed.
Yesterday my modern quilt guild friends and I had an all day sew-in via Zoom. It was a chance for long, leisurely conversations and one gal had just recently shared that her died died of AIDS, and she was going to make a quilt to honor his life. Yesterday she told us some more details. He died in 1990 when she was 17. She didn’t understand who and what her dad was then; her mother often ridiculed him. Her dad had become a minister in an attempt to ‘pray away the gay.’ At his funeral several of his close friends told her mom that he was so very upset at the way his life was going that he slept with anyone who was confirmed to have AIDS. He wanted to get sick and die. It was his way out of his misery. That was about the saddest take on being gay and AIDS that I’ve ever heard.
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