There was spontaneous cheering only once, when I read what Tip O’Neill said about Reagan—“he was an actor reading lines,” the former Speaker of the House had said. O’Neill was a Democrat from Massachusetts. Tip O’Neill also said “it was sinful that Ronald Reagan ever became president”—prompting a moment of sadness between Em and me, because Tip O’Neill had died a decade before.

Near the end of Reagan’s obituary, The New York Times quoted a college professor who said “the Reagan presidency was lacking in moral leadership, an essential quality for greatness.” The obit ended strangely. Reagan just talked about himself; a journalist had asked him how he thought history would remember him, an uninspired question.

“That’s it—that’s all there is?” Em asked me.

“That’s it,” I said.

“What about AIDS—did you skip the AIDS part?” Em asked. I’d skipped nothing; maybe Em had missed the AIDS part, when it was her turn to read. We’d blown most of the morning, reading the ceaseless minutiae of that obituary to each other; now we had to reread the whole thing. “How could we have missed the AIDS part?” Em kept asking me. But we hadn’t missed it. For those of us who knew the writing mattered, The New York Times had left out the AIDS part. There was no mention of it in Reagan’s obit.

“Holy crap,” I could hear Em saying. She was in the bedroom, rummaging around—more shirt cardboards were coming. The GOOD RIDDANCE sign would stay put—GOOD RIDDANCE wasn’t good enough. This was a writing matter.

“I don’t give a shit that the Gipper is gone! Do you?” Em was screaming in the bedroom. I just guessed this meant the writing was the only thing that mattered.

I thought Em’s first protest sign missed the mark; out of context, it might have been misunderstood.

WHAT ABOUT AIDS,

YOU ASSHOLES?

In Times Square, if we were carrying that sign on the sidewalk, no one would know which assholes we meant. You may remember that The New York Times used to be in an eighteen-story, neo-Gothic building on West Forty-third Street—dark and gloomy.

FUCK ALL THE NEWS

THAT’S FIT TO PRINT