MARY FISHER

MARY FISHER REPUBLICAN SPOKESWOMAN

At the Democratic National Convention in July 1992 among he most effective speakers were Robert Hattoy (see card 22) and Elizabeth Glaser (see card 94), both infected with HIV. The ollowing month at their convention, the Republicans fielded a similar HIV-positive speaker, 44-year-old Mary Fisher.

She is the daughter of the multimillionaire Detroit real estate ycoon Max Fisher, a long-time heavy contributor to Republican causes, and she worked in the White House of President Gerald Ford. White, female, upper-class, heterosexual, Mary Fisher does not present the stereotyped face of a person with AIDS. She contracted HIV from her former husband. After they were divorced, ne told her that he had tested positive for the virus and suggested that she and their two small sons (aged 1 and 3) be tested. In July 1991, she learned that she was infected but the boys were not.

At the Republican convention in August 1992, where Dan Quayle and Pat Buchanan suggested that only people like them were real Americans, Fisher was an effective speaker. Obviously Republican, she did not gloss over President Bush's poor record in handling AIDS (see card 89). She said, "We have killed each other with our prejudice, our ignorance, and our silence."

Like many people with AIDS, Mary Fisher has come to prize ife more highly, reveling in just being alive. To a New York Times reporter she said, "This has been a spiritual experience. I've come to believe that there's a purpose to life." When Magic Johnson (see card 26) resigned in October 1992 from the National Commission on AIDS, the replacement President Bush chose was Mary Fisher. Next Card 17: MICHEL FOUCAULT: Philosopher