One of my roommate's friends thinks that Magic Johnson doesn't have AIDS (Yeah, I know a couple people who say 'Magic doesn't have AIDS anymore' because they don't understand the difference between an undetectable viral load and NOT HAVING HIV, but this kid says he never had it). He says it's a 'conspiracy'.
His evidence is that Magic Johnson is unfathomably wealthy and is one of the largest property owners in the U.S. Therefore, he reasons, someone must have paid him an enormous sum of money to fake that he had HIV. Why? "So people would see that it's OK, and that you can still lead a normal life with AIDS!" Who? Well, he's a little hazy on that...he mentioned Bush I, at first, and I was like "Why the hell would President Bush want people to think it was OK to have AIDS? He was vice-president when they were this close >< to rounding up AIDS patients and putting them in concentration camps while denying the virus existed!" so he switched tacks and said it was the "AIDS people", meaning groups like ACT-UP and AIDS Action and whatnot. Considering these groups can barely pay their staffs, I think it's unlikely they pitched $250 million to Magic Johnson to pretend he had AIDS.
So, um, is this, like, a commonly-held belief, or is my roomie's friend uncommonly dim?
His evidence is that Magic Johnson is unfathomably wealthy and is one of the largest property owners in the U.S. Therefore, he reasons, someone must have paid him an enormous sum of money to fake that he had HIV. Why? "So people would see that it's OK, and that you can still lead a normal life with AIDS!" Who? Well, he's a little hazy on that...he mentioned Bush I, at first, and I was like "Why the hell would President Bush want people to think it was OK to have AIDS? He was vice-president when they were this close >< to rounding up AIDS patients and putting them in concentration camps while denying the virus existed!" so he switched tacks and said it was the "AIDS people", meaning groups like ACT-UP and AIDS Action and whatnot. Considering these groups can barely pay their staffs, I think it's unlikely they pitched $250 million to Magic Johnson to pretend he had AIDS.
So, um, is this, like, a commonly-held belief, or is my roomie's friend uncommonly dim?
