His Lifestyle Can’t Blunt Pain of Loss

And now it begins.

Now we have to start listening to all the sanctimonious soap-boxers who feel a compulsion to scold Magic Johnson.

Now we have to start hearing what a mistake we are making, glorifying someone so promiscuous and careless.

Now we are supposed to feel guilty because instead of feeling sorry for our friend Earvin Johnson, we should be expressing our outrage at his unconscionable lifestyle and how the young fool brought this thing on himself. We’ve got people demanding to know exactly what happened, how it happened, with whom it happened.

We’ve got people telling us to be ashamed for daring compare a basketball player’s illness to the assassination of John F. Kennedy, as though we should experience our sorrows by degrees.

We’ve got people writing letters protesting the “deification” of Magic Johnson, as though we have been saying how proud we are of him for contracting a virus that leads to AIDS.

Is this really necessary?

Can’t we simply feel lousy about what happened?

Can’t we simply acknowledge that Magic made mistakes and stand beside him in trying to persuade others not to repeat those mistakes?

Was it so terrible simply to say how much he meant to us as an athlete and how much he means to us as a person?

Do we have to go around feeling guilty now for “overpraising” someone?

If he ever had a homosexual experience, which he denies, must we go digging and digging and continue pressing this question until he answers it a hundred times or agrees to a polygraph test?

Is it news? Is it urgent? Is it a public-health issue? Do we have a right to know? Would we stop buying the products he endorses were it true? Should gay-rights activists not take “no” for an answer, not accept it, heed rumor or speculation, feed further speculation?

Magic’s sick. That’s all I care about.

If I were sick, that’s all I would want anybody else to care about.

Not like JFK?

No kidding.

OK, so he’s a basketball player, not the President of the United States. That doesn’t mean we admire him any less, simply because he had less authority. Politicians are often thrust upon us; heroes we choose. Different lifestyles? John F. Kennedy was not exactly a monk, you might recall.

Not like Lou Gehrig?

No kidding.

Several times now, I have heard that Gehrig’s fate was worse because his illness was something he could not have prevented. That does not make Magic’s illness less relevant. We were talking sense of loss here, about model and modest heroes cut down in their primes by something mysterious, handling it with grace.

Gehrig said: “People said I got a bad break. But today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth.”

Johnson said: “If I die tomorrow, I’d still have had the most wonderful life I could have imagined.”

They are simply three men, Kennedy, Gehrig, Johnson, same as any other three men, same as any three women, same as Kennedy’s baby brother or King or Sadat, same as any more anonymous individuals stricken with ailments or struck by weapons or vehicles, human beings fate has reaped, part of nature’s harvest.

Only, Earvin Johnson is still with us, still fighting, still offering to do some good, still volunteering to counsel others, still willing to make amends to anyone who persists that he must first seek out redemption.

He has admitted the error of his ways; what more can he do? He was a bachelor whose social life got out of hand. It wasn’t particularly wise and it wasn’t particularly nice, but he is hardly unique. Must we temper our hero worship because our idol had feet of clay and tempted flesh? Do we need say “He got what he deserved,” then publicly stone him for being a living example of some form of immorality?

Can’t we just feel bad?

We have this insidious plague out there that is wiping out a portion of our population. It doesn’t stop with sinners. It ravages harmless innocents such as Ryan White, a child from Indiana, and unsuspecting blood donors and dental patients. It is color blind and age indiscriminate. It is cruel, calculating and vicious.

Dan Quayle suggests abstinence. Yes. Fine. That is one way to avoid AIDS. But what about other ways? What do we do to support those who already have it? To safeguard those who someday will get it? To those who wed, wanting safety, wanting progeny, not wanting to hermetically seal themselves, Howard Hughes-like, from all human contact?

We pledge money to muscular-dystrophy telethons because the disease affects innocent children. What about the healthy children of today who could contract AIDS tomorrow? Where is our money for them?

Arsenio Hall, friend to Magic Johnson, said what we need is some of that “Schwarzkopf money,” some of the funds America is willing to commit to war. Already we can hear the murmur of dissent. How dare one be measured against the other? Missing, once again, the point.

No, Johnson was not out there fighting for his country. But he is fighting for his life, as are we all.

He needs our help, not our scorn. And AIDS victims need a cure, not a lecture.