THE KENNEDY FALLOUT

I had a missive from the editor of this newspaper this week, Alan Howe, who, for several reasons, was troubled by my radio, TV and print stand on Graham Kennedy and the cause of his death.

He said, quite rightly, that his newspaper –any newspaper – has an obligation to be fair and accurate in all its reporting.

And, as a former editor of a major newspaper, I agree with him.

One of the arguments touted all week is: So what if he died of AIDS? Why is that news? Well, they said it about Rock Hudson. They said that President Ford’s wife Betty had breast cancer. They’ll say it about me if I die of liver cancer.

It is news. Like it or not, it is a tax you pay if you are in the public eye.

I said on 3AW this week that, after last week’s column, I wanted to leave this issue alone. But it won’t go away. As I said, not everybody gets a public kicking at somebody else’s funeral. And Mike McColl Jones made some typically clever, barbed, jokes at my expense.

They were prompted by my claim that I believed Kennedy had died of an AIDS- related illness. Since then I have been criticized, daily, on various news services and on Today Tonight and A Current Affair. Even on Rove!

Not to mention various so-called colleagues on 3AW. I really do believe I shall eventually be proven right. Even though Kennedy was cremated. The “outed” will come out. And this is not homophobic. Despite what Andrew Bolt accused me of on television. As I have said: I have had several gay friends, dear friends, who have died of AIDS. I mean, I researched and wrote the first book about AIDS back in the 1980s. It was called AIDS -- Most of the Questions—Some of the Answers. It was sympathetic to AIDS victims and I personally paid for it to be published.

I am not homophobic at all. And maybe I sound like I protest too much.

But you can’t be involved with an actress like Jacki Weaver for a couple of decades without being involved with gays in the theatre. I used to call them the “moll patrol” and the “greasepaint mafia”.

Some of them are still cherished friends. And, sadly, several, have died of AIDS.

I said that I still thought I would be proven right. I do believe that Graham Kennedy was the first, the best, King of Australian TV. No doubt. No doubt at all. Bert has since taken the crown.

But to push a tired wheelbarrow: All history owes the dead is the truth.

I interviewed one of Kennedy’s male lovers last week. When I asked former TV and radio sports reporter Rob Astbury was he Kennedy’s lover, he said” “No comment”. I brutally asked him if he was HIV Positive and he said “No comment”. I knew the answers before I asked the questions.

Ask ME those questions and I wouldn’t say “no comment”. I’d say “Yes” or “No” or “Go to hell.” Or “None of your business”. Before you judge me, wait for the Astbury TV documentary. It was shot in Thailand this week. Several commercial TV networks are already vying for it. And wait for his revealing book. It will have some people in the TV industry trembling. I have read his manuscript. I believe him. The details about dinners and sex at Kennedy’s house in Frankston are just too detailed. I shall be vindicated.

I know I have been given a real kicking about comments about Kennedy and AIDS and lack of evidence. And about being allegedly homophobic.

I can tell you now, one compelling promised interviewee pulled out three minutes before I went to air last Friday. I suspect he was nobbled by people close to Kennedy. Protecting the image.

Funny isn’t it. The double standard. They all got outraged about my comments on radio last week. But when Kennedy’s comic writer Mike McColl Jones used me as a foil (about outing Kennedy) at the funeral this week they all laughed. Hypocrites. Real hypocrites.

There was a line about Oscar Wilde holding hands with Chips Rafferty. How does Rafferty’s family feel?

I did say on radio: You are not going to like this but I believe Graham Kennedy died from AIDS.

The pages of deserved tributes didn’t mention it. But Graeme Blundell, his biographer, who spent seven years working on his book, hinted at it in The Australian newspaper. He wrote about meeting Kennedy two years ago – long after the star refused to cooperate on his biography, appropriately called The King.

He talked about him “wearing heavy blue pyjamas, some sort of undershirt beneath, and Ugg boots. Unshaven, he stared out the window, his beard wispy and orange in colour, his thin, patchy, shiny white hair plastered across his scalp.”

And then, in the article, came the telling sentence: “There were large black patches on both his cheeks. They were so dark they looked like as if they had been applied with makeup”.

That is Karposi Sarcoma -- the black sign of the black death. I have had several gay friends who have developed those splotches and have sadly died.

That doesn’t demean Kennedy. Doesn’t deny his talents. But maybe it partly explains why he became a recluse.

It is true, there is a medical report, that Ray Martin brandished on A Current Affair, saying that Kennedy had had a blood test only days before he died that showed he was HIV negative. As I said then: Why would you do a blood test for AIDS on a 71-year-old man in a nursing home is beyond me. I am told Kennedy was not the needle stick victim anyway.

An e-mailer put forward the argument, that I cannot confirm, that if a person has AIDS, towards the end they will indeed test ‘negative’ for it is because their immune system has been so thoroughly destroyed there is no place for the virus to reside and so it is sequestered in various organs and not free in the blood.

This is backed up by some research I did on the Internet. One report said “Once drug therapy begins, the virus may not be detectable in the blood but it is still probably hiding in a latent state in areas of the body such as the lymph nodes, brain and testes.”

I apologised to Kennedy fans this week. Some people (including acerbic colleagues) didn’t accept that. They called it a “Clayton’s apology”. I pride myself on getting things right. On telling the truth as I see it and as I know it.

As I said, the Astbury documentary is being vied for by several networks. Be pious, transmit the funeral service live. But once that service is over and the body is either in the ground or cremated then it is open slather. That is why I believe I will be vindicated. If I still have a job is another matter.

All history owes the dead is the truth. And that includes me.

June 5, 2005

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2005