I am crushed.

The famed master satirist and Hollywood expert Howard Veit did not like "Angels in America":

Whenever the Left praises a movie you can bet the movie is a total propaganda piece. "Angels in America" ain't about God. Angels in America is about homosexuals being victims because they stuck their dicks into somebody's ass and caught AIDS. Like guess what? There ain't no penicillin up there, people. There's shit up there. What the hell do you think is going to happen to you if you slosh your dick around in shit for five minutes? A Federal hand out, that's what they think. Angels in America is about how everybody should rally and pay for their disease. It's about, hating Reagan, Republicans, and everybody who isn't on the "gay side". The New York Times led the usual liberal choir in praise of this homosexual spectacle. The people who watch TV knew exactly what a long winded piece of shit this was and didn't watch. No ratings at all. Sort of like the Abercrombe and Fitch catalog of filmdom.

I didn't particularly care for "Angels in America" either. But it didn't occur to me to whine about shit stabbers getting their just desserts -- any more than it would occur to me to say that cigarette smokers deserve to be neglected to death in government hospitals.

Oh well. To each his own, I guess.

Much as I share his loathing of the material, I must take issue with the reviewer's idea that "shit" plays a causative role in the transmission of AIDS.

Fecal material has nothing to do with it. Obviously, feces are unsanitary and loaded with bacteria, and could help spread innumerable infections, but according to the CDC there has never been a single case of AIDS infection via feces. (Otherwise, it would be tough to find a plumber in certain neighborhoods...)

The last link (involving a prisoner charged with attempted murder for flinging feces at a guard) is interesting, because legally, one cannot be convicted of attempting that which is impossible, regardless of intent. For example, if you shoot someone with a water pistol in the mistaken belief it was a real gun, an attempted murder charge will not lie. Similarly, it is not possible to attempt murder by means of a voodoo curse, because courts take judicial notice that voodoo does not work.

So, I think the feces-flinging convict has a good defense based on impossibility -- provided Mr. Veit is not sitting as the trial judge!

Ahem.

Where was I? Angels with dirty feces?

Right.

Infected semen and infected blood are the AIDS transmission vectors. And even there, the virus has to pass from an infected T cell to an uninfected T cell. Drinking blood will not do it, absent a cut in the mouth or esophagus.

A vampire would not even get AIDS.

It is the passive partner who is at risk, not the "shit stabbers" Mr. Veit so fondly condemns.

Why has Mr. Veit gotten his roles so hopelessly reversed?

Really, the stench and confusion are so dizzying that I seem to have lost track of whether this is a television review or a medical dispute. Surely, the infectious nature of shit (and whether or not it spreads AIDS) is not really a criticism of "Angels in America," is it? I mean, it would be one thing if the series were trying to make a case for the wondrous purities of shit, but so far, I don't think that has been the point.

I have never liked Tony Kushner, though, so I had to grit my teeth to watch "Angels in America."

Howard Veit made me do it. Honest!

Anyway, I did see issues which warrant attention.

First of all, there are serious logical problems with the notion that Ethel Rosenberg was a saint. She was not. The Venona transcripts have clearly demonstrated that Julius in particular was an important agent of the Soviet Union, and he was guilty as hell. This does not mean Ethel deserved the death penalty, though. A leading FBI investigator, along with J. Edgar Hoover, believed that Ethel should have been spared because her role was relatively minor (and subordinate to her husband's). Plus she was a mother. For what it's worth, I tend to agree with the ultraliberal J. Edgar Hoover that her life should have been spared.

Some "saint."

[NOTE: of course, look at some of the recent candidates for beatification....]

Of course, this hardly makes Roy Cohn a great guy. He was an aggressive, unethical prosecutor, Joe McCarthy's right hand man, and well, was not known as the world's nicest guy. He lied about his AIDS diagnosis, and was what might be called a classic closeted homosexual.

But no matter what anyone thinks of Cohn, even if you think him truly malevolent, it is a supremely manipulative abuse of logic to maintain that his villainy beatifies Ethel Rosenberg.

Rubbish! I am not a fan of Cohn or the McCarthy era, but this thinly disguised attempt at rehabilitating the Rosenbergs should be seen as the historical fraud that it is.

I think I just made a better case for shit than for "Angels in America." Still, it's well-written, and, well, it's entertainment -- as far as it goes.

As entertainment, it has about as much to do with history as Mr. Veit's feces have to do with AIDS.

(What kind of sicko would be entertained by both Veit and Kushner?)

UPDATE: When I wrote the above, I had not known about Mr. Veit's fascination with the Rosenberg case -- to the point of even writing hypothetical screenplays! Yet, despite such demonstrated, meticulous interest in the subject material, his review says not a word about the Rosenbergs, but focuses on feces.

If I didn't know any better, I might suspect jealousy was involved.

As to me, I'm jealouser than shit!