by an idiot of the first water. There is quite CLEARLY a
heterosexually driven epidemic of HIV/AIDS. All over the planet. And
right here in the United States.

He was basically wrong then and even more wrong now. Just like you,
Mark.

        George M. Carter

LOL....what a load of crap.

http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news/tenn02.htm
The Tennessean

November 29, 1998
The Tennessean
Critic of Oak Ridge stories has an agenda

by
JOHN SEIGENTHALER
Tennessean Chairman Emeritus

The card with the printed signature of the Oak Ridge mayor arrived in
the mail last week, suggesting that I read the enclosed article from
the Nov. 12 Wall Street Journal. I was interested - even though I had
already read the Journal opinion article.

I noted that the mayor's missive had not mentioned that the author of
the article, Michael Fumento, identified by the Journal as "a science
journalist" had begun his piece by relocating Oak Ridge in "western
Tennessee."

Fumento's article, headlined, "A Newspaper Invents a Nuclear Health
Scare," was an all-out assault on the extensive series of articles
that have appeared in The Tennessean concerning "unexplained
illnesses" that afflict 410 people who live in areas around nuclear
plants in the nation. Unless you regularly read The American
Spectator, the magazine that loves to hate Bill Clinton, The
Washington Times, the Moonie-owned daily that loves to hate him more,
or The National Review, or the Weekly Standard or Reason Magazine, or
other publications bent to the right (a couple of them to the radical
right), Michael Fumento will not be a byline you will recognize.
He is a man of multifarious titles. At diverse times, in addition to
his identification as a "science journalist," he has also been called
(or called himself) a "self syndicated columnist," a "former Reagan
administration lawyer," a "medical writer," a "science journalist," an
"environmental correspondent," a "national issues" reporter, a "legal
affairs writer," a "Consumer Alert Fellow," an "American Enterprise
Institute Fellow," a "Warren T. Brooks Fellow" (whatever that is), "a
Burkean conservative" (whatever else that is), "an adviser to the
Atlantic Legal Foundation," and "an editorial writer for the Rocky
Mountain News." The king of England at the power peak of the British
colonial empire did not claim as many titles as this Fumento.

The one I found most fascinating was "former AIDS analyst for the U.S.
Civil Rights Commission." It was a job, Forbes magazine reported, from
which he was "banished to insipid fact-checking" because of his views.
He also, incidentally, was fired from his job at the Rocky Mountain
News after two and a half months- but, says Jay Ambrose, his former
editor there, not because of his "ideological views." He has, indeed,
written about AIDS. In July 1986, this appeared under a bylined book
review in the National Review: "If AIDS is the plague of the 1980s,
then homosexuals are the rats who are the carriers." That is not an
absurd quote taken out of context. A reading of the entire article
leaves no doubt that Fumento said what he meant and meant what he
said. In the immediately preceding sentences, he asserted that the
"proclivity" of homosexuals to anal sex and their "relative
promiscuity" had given them what he called "their ignoble status as
plague carriers." In this and other publications, he has emphasized
his point that AIDS is no threat to the heterosexual community - even
though he acknowledged that 27% of the population afflicted with the
disease were not homosexuals. He criticized C. Everett Koop, the
former surgeon general, whose warnings sought to alert both
homosexuals and heterosexuals to the danger of AIDS. In 1989, Fumento
published a book on the subject, The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS, in
which he blamed the Center for Disease Control and AIDS activists for
creating a "scare" about the disease.

A couple of comments by reviewers are worth mentioning. David Shaw,
the media critic of The Los Angeles Times, wrote, "To hear Michael
Fumento tell it, the notion of an impending AIDS epidemic in the
general heterosexual community, is a colossal lie perpetrated on the
public by a deliberately deceitful press ... self aggrandizing AIDS
activists ... willfully negligent public health officials and morally
bankrupt ideologues." Shaw wrote that Fumento's "callousness toward
AIDS victims" was "most unfortunate.'

Patricia Cohen, in Washingtonian Monthly, said: "He's most certainly
wrong. ... In fact, AIDS is alive and well and growing at a terrifying
pace among heterosexuals - only they're poor and black." Even before
the book was out, it created a storm of controversy. In the June issue
of Forbes magazine, a reviewer praised the book, which led to massive
protests by AIDS activists in front of the magazine's New York
offices. The following month, the late Malcolm Forbes, not
surprisingly, published a personal apology for the article, describing
Fumento's views as "asinine." Fumento also claims to be an expert on
diet and nutrition. His most recent book, The Fat of the Land,
includes a harsh attack on Dr. Martin Katahn, the Nashville
psychologist whose two diet books, published in 1986 and 1989, hit the
top of The New York Times, best-seller list, one for six months and
the other for three years.

Fumento calls the books "The Katahn Catastrophe" because it runs
against his thesis that fat people must help themselves get thin- and
not rely on diets like Katahn's. The theme of his book is pretty
simple: He was traveling through Europe and noted that Europeans were
thinner than Americans traveling in Europe - including himself. So he
decided to take off the weight. And did, without any help from Katahn,
thank you very much. He boldly asserts that he can save fat people
from themselves. His bottom-line thesis seems to be that readers
should buy his book and forget Katahn and other authors who agree with
him.

Katahn has a policy of not responding to critics of his work. He would
only say Fumento had never talked to him about his diet plans or
theories, and that he has not read The Fat of the Land. It didn't
sound as if he plans to do so.

While Fumento's "self syndicated" columns show up occasionally in some
mainstream newspapers, most often the major theme of his writing is to
attack the "news media" as The New Evil Empire. For example, on his
favorite current subject, "fat people": "The media must stop
glorifying obesity."

For another, he insisted in a Wall Street Journal article that the
national concern over the wave of church burnings in the South was a
"myth" created by the news media and the National Council of Churches.
The Council created the scare to collect money, he said, not for
church altars but to promote the cause of gays and feminists. "There
was no epidemic" of church burnings, Fumento wrote. He asserted that
only two churches were burned by Ku Klux Klan members. "That's it for
the white supremacists," he said.

While there was no evidence of a national or regional plot to burn
black churches in the south, a Justice Department report in June 1997
provided evidence that Fumento refused to accept: An investigation of
429 cases of arson revealed that four out of 10 were at black
churches. Three-fourths of the churches were in the South. Law
enforcement agencies had arrested 199 suspects -160 of them white - in
connection with 150 of the arson cases. Seventy-five of those charged
had been found guilty - including 14 who were charged specifically
with civil rights violations - three of them in Nashville.

That Justice Department report did not include the fact that four Ku
Klux Klan members pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges for burning a
black church in South Carolina. In Baton Rouge, La., a white man
pleaded guilty to burning three African-American churches and
confessed in open court that he was motivated by his dislike for black
people. That's it for the media myth.

Here is what Fumento wrote in another article about reports of angry
motorists traveling traffic-packed thoroughfares in congested cities:
"There is no evidence that `road rage' or an aggressive driving
`epidemic' is anything but a media invention, inspired primarily by
something as simple as a powerful alliteration."

On news coverage of the militia movement: "Part of the reason the
media hate the militia is because they have guns. God help them if
they also smoke. But another factor is that the media fear what they
don't understand. ... They can't possibly comprehend the thinking of
people so very mistrustful of Big Government." He added that while
"many militia members are downright paranoid ... that's hardly
illegal." In fair ness, he wrote it before the tragedy in Oklahoma
City.

On what he calls "Pink Propaganda" in women's magazines: "In addition
to lipstick and tampons, they specialize in selling fear - and the
notion that Big Government is almost always the solution."

As to his attack on The Tennessean, his column challenges the idea
that the 410 cases of illness discovered by reporters Laura Frank and
Susan Thomas were worthy of reporting to the public. There was, he
said, no pattern. There were all sorts of ailments, ranging from
dizziness to diabetes, muscle pain to memory loss, hives to heart
disease ..." (Fumento by the way, seems inspired himself by
alliteration.)

He challenges The Tennessean' statistics, its reporting, its
characterization of the facts, and complain that other newspapers have
picked up the story and created "fear." He provides his own
statistics, facts and characterizations, and quotes his own selected
studies, including one from Switzerland, to put down this series.

His basic complaint is that The Tennessean's series is another myth
that creates fear - shades of new media reporting on AIDS, the militia
movement, church arsons and "road rage."

And what does Fumento fear? (Alliteration can be contagious.): He
states in the column that the federal government estimates that
lawsuits from people who read or learn about the newspaper stories
could result in $2.1 billion in legal costs. The 4l0 cases could
become 41,000, he says. The series of stories, he worries, could
endanger national defense "and could even threaten the nation's
nuclear deterrent." Get serious.

For most of the years I was a journalist at The Tennessean, I accepted
the government's assertion that the atomic bombs that ended World War
II would be converted into "peaceful purposes." There was the Atomic
Energy Commission's decades of indoctrination that nuclear plants
would provide the power to drive the nation's industrial plants,
heaters, coolers, make our lives comfortable. It would be safe. It
would be efficient. We in Tennessee had reason to be proud of Oak
Ridge and of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which came to take
seriously the challenge to build nuclear plants that would fulfill the
"peaceful purposes" promise of the AEC.

But gradually over three decades, the safety and cost of nuclear power
became a national debate - and with Chernobyl, an international
debate. Looking back on the news stories and editorials, it is clear
that the news media should have asked more questions and demanded more
answers much sooner.

During my years as reporter, editor and publisher of The Tennessean, I
should have asked more questions and sought more answers. Once the
media began to report on the dangers and the soaring costs of nuclear
plants, and the disposal of their waste (the dangers are as real as
AIDS or the militia movement), citizens began to express grave
concerns. The questions the media raised were responsible, if late. It
is also a vital responsibility of the media to give voice to citizens
whose pleas are not heard anywhere else - not by the government, the
medical community, the scientific community. While Fumento has twisted
the thrust of the stories, as he twisted the words of reporters Thomas
and Frank when he interviewed them (the articles in fact emphasized
the problems of victims who suffered neurological or respiratory
ailments or memory loss), that is where a pattern of illness raises
questions.

While the series of articles has reached some conclusions, it has not
been able to answer the questions-only to raise legitimate concerns.
And the reporters have related the words of doctors they have
interviewed who are mystified by their inability to diagnose either
causes or cures for their patients. The illnesses, the paper has said,
are "unexplained." It should be said that after The Tennessean
indicated a willingness to listen to the victims and report their
fears, low-level staff members of government agencies urged that the
newspaper pursue the story. They were fearful that the Department of
Energy studies had not dealt with the potential dangers adequately or
thoroughly. Finally, representatives of government have begun to pay
attention. Sen. Bill Frist, the only medical professional in the U.S.
Senate, has shown an interest. So have other members of Congress whose
constituents are suffering. Their response may finally promote answers
to the questions that have been raised. That, contrary to Fumento, is
no threat to national security or our nuclear deterrent.

Sure, there are some medical authorities and some scientists-highly
qualified and distinguished - who don't think the plight of 410 people
is worth much research and study. Without clear empirical evidence,
they would not waste a minute researching these cases. That I
understand, even expect. But a newspaper thought it was worth
researching and studying. And it upset Michael Fumento, a man of many
titles. Since retiring from an active role at The Tennessean, I have
from time to time asked to write articles for these pages. I have
refrained from commenting on, criticizing or defending the newspaper
in anything I wrote, but this article is published at my request. Next
week, I expect to receive another card from the Oak Ridge mayor, this
one including a couple of Henry Walker's recent columns from The
Nashville Scene, which have embraced Michael Fumento and his criticism
of The Tennessean.

The mayor, like Walker, I guess, takes help wherever he can get it.

(Seigenthaler, a journalist of 50 years' experience, is chairman
emeritus of The Tennessean.)