Senator Bayh And The Disastrous AIDS Joke

05/15/10-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire

Senator Evan Bayh has earned the award for the lamest, stupidest, and potentially offensive joke of the month, if not of the year so far. While at the 2010 Indiana Jefferson Jackson Day Dinner, Senator Bayh made a joke about AIDS. Of course, the Senator believes that he was just misunderstood, but the joke did cause the room to thin out a little bit afterwards when the Indiana Stonewall Democrats got up and left the room.

I want to say how good it is to be home. I got into that airport and I don’t know about the rest of you but every time I fly into Indianapolis airport I look at that thing and I think to myself, “You know if it weren’t for Bart Peterson, this thing wouldn’t be here.”
[applause]
He was a great Mayor and I’m so proud of him and everybody that helped make his accomplishment possible.
So I’m walking through the airport and people were kinda being nice and making eye contact and a couple come up and say hello. This one person runs up all excited and I’m prepared to say “Hello,” and he says, “Senator Bayh! Senator Bayh!”
I said “Well, yes?” and he looked at me and said, “Do you have AIDS?”
[audible gasps]
I said, “Huh?”
He said, “Yeah. Do you have AIDS?”
I was dumbfounded. I didn’t know what to say.
He said, “I’ve got a letter I want to give you, do you have someone I can hand this to? Do you have an aide with you?”
[laughter]
So you never know what people are going to say.
[more laughter]
Many of you have asked me… You’ve got to be prepared for about anything, you know?

Now, I will absolutely admit that I am one of the hardest people to offend in the world, but really, Senator Bayh, the first thing that comes into your mind is that this person would be talking about AIDS and not aids? It takes a really dense person to make that mistake, or one who has gotten about zero sleep in seventeen days. While you may have had intentions of making yourself look foolish in the joke, all you did was make yourself look foolish because of the joke.

In the interview after the joke, Senator Bayh stated:

BB: Do you have a statement that the Indiana Stonewall Democrats walked out in protest after the AIDS joke?
Sen Bayh: No. Look, I’ve voted for AIDS funding and all sorts of things. And I’ve been for all sorts of things in terms of equality and lifestyle and that sort of thing. I’m sorry they took offense to that. It was certainly not intended.
BB: Can you see that it was rather offensive though? “Do you have AIDS? Do you have AIDS?” as if it’s a bad thing to have AIDS.
Sen Bayh: No, I wasn’t interpreting it as bad, I was just quizzical about it.
BB: Okay.
Sen Bayh: So you misunderstood my comments or they misunderstood my comments.
BB: Okay. Thanks.
Sen Bayh: I was taken by surprise. I did not interpret it as a negative statement.
BB: Okay, thanks for clarifying for me.