DERBYSHIRE AWARD NOMINEE

“At the time of the robbery, Ms. Boudin had been a fugitive for several years, since her known involvement in a 1970 terrorist bomb-making operation in New York City. She occupied herself in jail by getting a master’s degree in adult education, assisting other inmates to get degrees, and ministering to inmates with AIDS (a fashionable venereal disease).” – John Derbyshire, National Review. He subsequently denigrates Boudin because she is working to help women affected with HIV, because she isn’t helping people with a “less chic disease.” He describes this ministry as “cushy.” He should visit an AIDS ward. This “fashionable venereal disease” is killing millions across the planet – young, old, men, women, children. In prisons, it’s often a result of rape, and a growing crisis that needs to be addressed out of simple compassion. It can be transmitted by non-sexual means. To trivialize the suffering of people with such a disease by calling it “fashionable” is to spit in the face of the sick – yes, the sick. There are plenty of reasons to dislike what Kathy Boudin has done in the past. But that she is now helping some of the most marginalized and needy people in our society is surely a good thing, and something no sane or right-minded person would seek to belittle. Some of the editors at that magazine call themselves Christians. Yet they gladly publish a smug, sickening bigot like this. This isn’t funny. It isn’t even pertinent to any broader point. It’s despicable.