Give the People AIDS (a letter to Anderson Cooper)

This is unlikely to come as a news flash to anyone, but AIDS is killing people. Lots of people. People here, people there. People on a train in the rain, in a box with a fox. People everywhere. But nowhere more than in Africa where 1 in 6 will die real soon if more isn't done to help. Common knowledge for the most part. What you might not have heard is that a few years back the WTO (World Trade Organisation), responding to outcries by large U.S., British and Swiss pharmaceutical companies, halted the free cross-border trade of AIDS drugs from Argentina to South Africa. This was due to what the WTO calls Trips (Trade-related intellectual property rights). Someone else owned the patent to the AIDS drug that could be produced cheaply in Argentina and sold cheaply by them. In response to public outcry (not made all that public by the media) the U.S. agreed to lend $1 Billion a year to South Africa providing that they buy all the drugs from America (more expensive) and pay back all the cash at commercial interest rate levels (ludicrously expensive when you consider how much interest will pile up by the time S.A. is able to pay it back). This is just one example of news. Real news. Real news that's 6 years old and that shouldn't have taken me forever to dig up, especialy considering that the deal is still in place. But guess what? Angelina Jolie had a fucking baby. It's name is Shiloh. Who gives a shit? I know who. CNN's Anderson Cooper, I'm sure under orders from Ted Turner or one of his clowns, decided that a celebrity, post-natal baby shower is deserving of an hour-long, prime-time segment on the most watched 24 hour news network on the planet. Corporate criminals? International extortion rackets? AIDS? Don't worry, here, look at the bunny. Look, look at da wittle buwny.

Before I present you with the Anderson Cooper letter I'd like to point out that I don't blame Angelina Jolie for this. To her credit she has done a lot of charity work to help the sick and the poor. It's not her fault she's being used as an opiate to pacify the masses.




Dear Anderson Cooper,

I'm writing to thank you for your courageous reporting. My name is Tchalla Mubawe and I live in a small village in South Africa. I rarely get the chance to view television because I don't often leave home due to the exhaution caused by AIDS. Yesterday however, while away buying food for this year, I caught your show on the 14", black and white tv in the other town's square. You are a godsend, Anderson Cooper. You see, I am dying of AIDS, as is my daughter. Dying of AIDS, that is. My wife and brother died of AIDS last year along with many others from our poor village. My country simply can not afford to buy enough of the treatment drugs from the United States to help us with the symptoms. The AIDS symptoms.

My poor daughter had not been doing well the past few weeks. As I was leaving home yesterday, she grabbed me frailly by the arm (AIDS makes you very weak) and she said:

- "Father, I fear that I may soon die of AIDS. I have one last wish."

- "What is it, my daughter who has AIDS?" I replied.

- "Before I take my last breath, you know, because of the AIDS and all, I only wish to know how things went with the delivery of Angelina Jolie's baby. Oh, and also how Jennifer Aniston feels about the whole thing."

I was crushed. How was I to find out about such important, classified information for my daughter? Surely I could not tell her that her last wish (before dying of AIDS) could not be granted by her loving father (also, with AIDS). Then along came our gentle, but serious blessing in grey, devilishly handsome hair on the neighboring town's television box. Anderson Cooper. You got to the bottom of the story for the good of the people. Put your reputation and life on the line to bring us every last detail of little Shiloh's birth. Through hell and high water you braved, ready to fight for our right to know about celebrities babies and labour pains and other such globaly relevant stuff. Yours is the type of investigative reporting that makes me stand up and cheer, until I have to sit down again because I have AIDS. Lots and lots of AIDS. Seriously, it's exhausting.

I rushed home to tell my AIDS...I mean daughter of our angel Anderson Cooper and the fantastic news that he had brought us. That he had granted her last wish. That though she and a quarter of our country was dying of AIDS, Angelina Jolie and her newborn baby were O.K. Unfortunately, by the time I arrived, I found that my daughter was dead. Dead from lead poisoning. Because we don't have very clean drinking water either. I...still have AIDS.


Yours,
Tchalla Mubawe


P.S. Please ask Paula Zahn to do a report on dogs that can do backflips and maybe one on what Renee Zellweger wears on dinner dates. The fate of my country may depend on it.