‘Don’t Feel Sorry for Me,’ Magic Says : Disease: Johnson, on national TV, begins his campaign to educate the public about AIDS. ‘We don’t have to run from it,’ he insists.

A day after announcing that he is infected with the AIDS virus, Magic Johnson moved to a new center stage Friday, pleading with a talk show’s national television audience to practice safe sex and reassuring them: “You don’t have to feel sorry for me, because if I die tomorrow I’ve had the greatest life.”

Beginning a mission to “educate the public on what’s going on,” Johnson spent 15 minutes talking about AIDS and sex on the nationally syndicated Arsenio Hall Show, which was taped in Hollywood and broadcast Friday night.

“I came on to let the people know what time it is,” he said after a raucous four-minute standing ovation. “Please put your thinking caps on and put your cap on down there,” he said, gesturing below his belt in a reference to using condoms.

Throughout the nation Friday, Johnson’s infection continued to dominate casual chatter and policy-makers’ pronouncements, creating the kind of widespread public acknowledgement of the disease that health experts have struggled--without success--to kindle.

What was being felt, Texas newspaper columnist Jim Reeves wrote, were the walls of AIDS closing in around society.

“AIDS came home to our neighborhood,” he wrote in the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram. “Mine and yours. It pulled up a chair, sat down in our midst and began shaking hands, as if it belonged there, as if it wasn’t wearing the dark hood and death mask of the grim reaper. As if--and this is the scary part--it was an old friend, come to pay its respects.”

In his television appearance, Johnson said he was infected through heterosexual sex.

“I’m far from being a homosexual,” he said.

He said he had believed the myth that the virus that causes AIDS does not strike heterosexuals who are not drug abusers.

“That’s so wrong. I was naive,” he said.

“We don’t have to run from it,” Johnson said of the virus. “We don’t have to be ashamed of it . . . You don’t have to run from me like, ‘Oh-oh, here comes Magic.”’

Johnson, who previously said he received news of his infection on Wednesday, said he had offered to leave his wife of two months, Earletha--commonly known as Cookie--to spare her the “pressure” of what would ensue.

“She almost slapped me upside the head,” he said. “She’s a strong woman. I was smart to marry her.”

He stressed that he had accepted his diagnosis, said he was concentrating on eating well and taking medicine and added that he had run four miles earlier in the day.

“I am still Earvin, happy-go-lucky, living life to the fullest, having a good time. . . . I am not fearing it. I am not down. I am alive. I’m here.”

He said the numerous companies that he serves as a high-paid spokesman have individually called to say they will retain his services.

Outside the Paramount Studios set, scores of admirers unable to get inside clustered outside the gate. Vendors sold Louisiana hot links and T-shirts featuring pronouncements of love for Johnson.

“Oh Magic, we are grieved by this tragic news,” said one poster carried by a fan. “Thank you for being honest.”

The health status of Johnson’s wife, who is seven weeks’ pregnant, was uncertain Friday. Laker spokesmen said that she had tested negative for the virus. But AIDS specialists noted Friday that the virus can elude notice by blood testing for up to six months after infection.

“She’s not out of the woods,” said Dr. Mark Smith, a longstanding AIDS clinician. “Most people will say if she’s negative at six months, the chances are extremely slim that she’ll ever be positive. But certainly seven weeks is not long enough to be at all certain.”

About one-third of all babies born to infected mothers end up infected themselves.

Longtime AIDS specialists, and veterans of the political wars over AIDS policy, were invigorated by the public response to Johnson’s announcement--though somewhat dismayed that many of the questions pouring in to hot lines seemed remarkably unsophisticated.

“We had thought that we had been giving out this information for years,” said Dr. Reed Tuckson, a former health commissioner for the District of Columbia who is now president of Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles.

The challenge now facing advocacy and support groups, Tuckson said, is to capitalize on the emotion and energy unleashed--”to nurture it and sustain it and direct it for the long haul” into legislative action, increased funding and a coordinated volunteer effort.

Dr. Mervyn Silverman, president of American Foundation for AIDS Research, said he hoped the public interest “would somehow jump-start” the Bush Administration, particularly in the areas of AIDS education and prevention.

“But the greatest impact is going to be the impact on the young, to re-evaluate their sense of invincibility,” he said. “The youth of America is the most vulnerable, and they’re the hardest to reach. This courageous move by Magic may very well have the effect of doing what we couldn’t do in any other way.”

Gov. Pete Wilson made the same point in a speech to a manufacturers association in Los Angeles, urging broadcast stations to offer Johnson public-service time.

“I think frankly that a few words from him would mean more than an educational campaign from a number of other people,” Wilson said. “A lot of kids . . . seem to think that they and Magic are . . . somehow beyond the reach of this virus.”

It has long been believed that shame and fear have hampered efforts to control the AIDS epidemic, because many Americans have been unwilling to be tested for HIV--a step seen as central to treating the disease and preventing infected people from spreading it.

Johnson’s disclosure may go a long way to dispel the shame, Tuckson said.

“There’s no question that for a brief period there will be a more heightened concern by individuals about their own status,” said Smith, a vice president of the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation. “How much we can effect behavior change over the long run remains to be seen.”

Smith suggested Johnson was the first black public figure to stake an affirmative claim to the AIDS issue, in the way that many within the gay community have long defined the cause as theirs.

“My sense is that the black community really has yet to do that in the same way,” said Smith, who is black.

Smith said the impact of Johnson’s announcement will be far greater than the news of Rock Hudson’s diagnosis. Many young Americans “don’t know from Rock Hudson,” Smith said, and the country is likely to eventually witness the slow deterioration of Johnson’s health.

“People didn’t have a chance to grieve with Rock Hudson and understand the process of his getting sick,” Smith said. “People are going to see Magic Johnson as he struggles with his illness. Odds are . . . that will be, in some ways, a much more painful process for people.”

In San Francisco on Friday, Gerald Lenoir, executive director of the San Francisco Black Coalition on AIDS, said his education and referral organization had already begun getting more calls from people wanting information on testing and treatment.

“Magic has saved thousands of lives and maybe even millions of lives,” he said.

Drew University’s Tuckson said he hopes for a “transference of the love and concern and compassion (for Johnson) to the thousands of faceless others who are struggling each day to live with this disease and who are, this day, dying . . . who don’t have the support systems to turn their bedsheets for them, to give them a sip of ginger ale at three in the morning.”

At Los Angeles City Hall, the steps where Johnson celebrated so many Laker championships at spirited rallies were renamed the “Magic Johnson Plaza of Champions” Friday by the City Council.

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky, who has two sons, said Johnson has made it “easier for parents to discuss the issue of safe sex.”

“I thank Magic Johnson for his courage, and I thank him for opening up communication between me and my kids on a subject that is difficult to discuss,” Yaroslavsky said. “If nothing else, this weekend there is going to be some serious conversation in the Yaroslavsky household that otherwise would not have taken place.”

In Rome, President George Bush called Johnson a “hero” who “has handled his problem in a wonderful way.

Vice President Dan Quayle, speaking to reporters in Los Angeles on Friday, repeated his theme of sexual abstinence as vital in fighting sexually transmitted diseases.

“If there is something that I can personally do to encourage young people, I would say not ‘safe sex,’ I would talk about abstinence. That’s a sure cure and we ought to be talking about that.”

Times staff writers Bob Baker, Chris Baker, Louis Sahagun, Cathleen Decker and Bill Stall contributed to this story.

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