Category: Old Dish

Not exactly. For my take on how Bush can reach out to gays, and how gays can reach out to the president, check out my new TRB, “All In The Family,” posted opposite.

It’s spreading. Now even Dominick Dunne has decamped. He tells Frank Digiacomo of the New York Observer, “I’m a big Clintonite; I have always been, through thick and thin. But I’ve got to tell you that I am disappointed beyond disappointment. Giving a pardon to a crook who gave up his citizenship-the whole thing stinks and smells.” Another “prominent Democrat and Clinton supporter who requested anonymity” says, “I have yet to find one person who can defend, explain or support what they’ve done … [The anger is] really quite extraordinary, actually. I’ve never seen a reaction this unanimous.” Who could be next? Al Hunt?

The sometimes crazy but often accurate AIDS activist Michael Petrelis emails to let me know that the one dark lining in my analysis of the San Francisco Health Dept HIV report may actually be a little lighter. I reported that the data shows a doubling of rectal gonorrhea among gay men in San Francisco in five years – a deeply worrying trend. The report didn’t show the size of the testing samples so I took it as a stable and reliable indicator. It turns out it isn’t. In their 1999 report, the San Francisco Department of Public Health explained the sampling background for gonorrhea testing: “In response to the city-wide increases seen in 1995, we began testing more MSM [men who have sex with men] seen at City Clinic for rectal gonorrhea (since infections may be asymptomatic): the number of tests increased from 542 in 1995 to 1285 in 1999 while the number of male visits per year remained approximately 11,000. This increase in screening could be expected to increase the number of reported cases. The number of cases with symptoms did not change between 1996 and 1999, which indicates that the increase in cases may be due to the increased number of tests.” So the doubling of gonorrhea cases, by any reasonable assessment, is completely explained by the more than doubling of the number of tests. Quite why that wasn’t made clear in the current report is beyond me.

Check out Warren Hoge’s hilarious obit of Betty Kenward, the crusty old snob who wrote “Jennifer’s Diary,” in Harper’s and Queen, a British socialite magazine. Almost made me miss the place.

Told you. This Marc Rich pardon has legs. Fighting words from Safire this morning – investigate!, subpoena!, prosecute! – and classic Richard Cohen, pointing out that Clinton’s final act of shamelessness made his defenders for the past eight years look simply stupid. (By the way, I counted over 35 ‘I’s, ‘me’s, or ‘we’s in this column supposedly about a presidential scandal. Good going for Cohen. He makes me look outer-directed). Maybe when Sidney Blumenthal publishes his $650,000 book, we’ll find out that Rich was in fact a saint who helped win the war in Bosnia, but until that time, suspicions will be justified. And the relative boredom and punctuality of the Bush era are already forcing hacks to reach back in time to examine the Clinton mess. My fearless prediction: the outrage that half the country felt for years will soon become mild nausea in the other half. Hillary is clearly in trouble. Jack Quinn is now a dark shade of brown on both sides.

For a few hours last night, something called a server refused to serve. I’ve had some stern words with it; and it won’t happen again. Thanks for your patience.

The San Francisco Public Health Department study which alleges a sharp increase in HIV infection in that city among gay men has just been released. I’m grateful to the researchers for getting me a copy. What that means, of course, is that all those news stories written last week were written by reporters with no access to the actual data! Go figure. What’s my read? There are six mini-studies of men seeking sex with men (gay and bisexual) that lead the researchers to their conclusion of soaring infection rates. I have to say that I’m unconvinced. It’s possible, but nothing in the report proves it. Only one study has a reasonably representative sample of young gay men between the ages of 21 and 29, randomly selected from neighborhoods where AIDS infection is highest in the city. But the sample size varies considerably over time. In 1994 – 95, for example, there were 660 men in the sample. In 1998 – 99, there were 322. In 1993 – 94, there were a mere 261. Unsurprisingly, the smallest samples show the greatest variation from the mean. In 1993, at the height of the safe-sex era, HIV-transmission is calculated as 2.7 percent. The next year, the rate plummeted to 1.4 percent. The researchers provide no reason for this shift, and it’s almost certainly a function of sample size. Last year’s incidence rate of 1.8 percent is certainly within the realm of the average of the last several years which is around 1.4 percent. The “doubling” scare is more a function of the freak low figure for 1997 – 98, for which again there is no explanation. And the numbers themselves are tiny – a mere three HIV seroconversions in 1997; a mere 9 in 1998 – 99. You’d be statistically right if you declared a tripling in HIV rates from such numbers. But you’d also be really silly to draw such a conclusion from a total of 12 cases.

The other studies are just as weak. One looks at men who get anonymous HIV testing at public clinics. This, as the study’s authors delicately put it, “may not be representative of the community” as a whole. No kidding. The sample sizes are also all over the place. The number seeking testing in 1996 was 3,488. In 1998 that number was 2,910. In 1999, the number fell again to 1,826 – a vast difference in sample size, and one that should set off alarm bells in drawing easy conclusions from one year to the next. The inference that transmission rates have increased is based on a new sort of biological analysis that can tell whether HIV infection is recent or not. Sure enough, more recently infected people are showing up at STD clinics. But what do these numbers tell us? They tell us that many fewer men are being tested than in the past and many more of them have been infected recently. One obvious conclusion from this is not an increase in HIV-transmission. It is that most gay men in San Francisco have already been tested for HIV and know their status. But those who may recently have had an unsafe incident or accident are the ones most likely to get tested. This is certainly just as plausible an explanation for the increase in incidence of HIV and a shrinking number of testers as an alleged outbreak of new HIV transmission. In the only study where the sample size seems to be increasing – for gay men showing up at STD clinics – the rate of HIV transmission is basically stable. In 1995, with a sample of 634 men, 5.8 percent showed up HIV-positive. In 1999, with a sample of 1,071 men, the rate had dropped to 4.7 percent. I’m sorry, but that isn’t an explosion. To my mind, the only truly worrying sign in all the data is the number of rectal gonorrhea cases. This is a real number, since, unlike HIV, gonorrhea infections must be recorded by law. These are clearly rising, suggesting a declining use of condoms. The number has risen from 97 cases in 1995 to 160 cases in 1999 and 93 cases in the first six months of 2000. But this may not be evidence of HIV-transmission. Why? Because two HIV-positive men could transmit gonorrhea through unsafe sex, but not transmit HIV – because they both already have it. Another study shows that the rate of STDs among people with AIDS has doubled in five years, suggesting that unsafe sex may indeed be primarily an issue between HIV-positive people, not a means of HIV-transmission. The bottom line is: the case for a doubling in HIV-rates in San Francisco is simply not proven. If it’s happening, these studies don’t prove it. And journalists who trumpet the fact would do well to read the studies before broadcasting the executive summary.

Two words: Andrew Cuomo. Just a pity he didn’t have his launch party at Denise Rich’s, as planned.

“The Senate has nearly uniformly sought to avoid disapproving nominees because of their philosophy alone, and I believe we should not begin to do so now,” – Senator Russell Feingold. Amen, brother. The point here is not whether Ashcroft is a bad pick for AG. He is. The point is whether a new president should be allowed lee-way in picking who will be in his cabinet. Yes, the Senate can and has barred candidates for cronyism, corruption, scandal or drink. But only ideology stood in the way of Ashcroft. Russ Feingold is proof that someone on the Democratic side has the smarts to see where the wind is blowing. It makes sense for Democrats to respond to Bush in good faith and with restraint. The public will flush out divisive partisanship quickly enough. My prediction: more Dems will follow the Feingold approach. And they’ll benefit from it.