Oct 2 1978

Tim Allen is arrested with 1.4 pounds of cocaine at Kalamazoo Airport in Michigan. After testifying against his partner, Allen serves only 2.5 years for felony drug possession. Otherwise, it would have been a life sentence. Tim later becomes a comic, ultimately landing the starring role in the ABC television sitcom Home Improvement.

I knew there was a reason why I didn't like that guy.


Also on this day in history

Oct 2 1985

Homosexual actor Rock Hudson dies of AIDS in his Beverly Hills home.



After Hudson's death, Marc Christian sued his lover's estate on grounds of "intentional infliction of emotional distress." Christian tested negative (and as far as anyone knows is still HIV-free) — but the fact remains that Hudson continued having sex with him for a year after he knew he had AIDS. (So he says, Hudson is dead) Through high-profile attorney Marvin Mitchelson (the plaintiff's lawyer in the 1976 Lee Marvin "palimony" case), Christian sued for $5 million, and ended up with $14.5 million ("Sometimes juries get angry," Mitchelson later remarked).



Lest you applaud Marc Christian as a hero — despite the fact that his suit and subsequent win sent a message to those who might fail to inform partners of their HIV status — keep in mind Christian's apparent internalized homophobia and obvious disdain for the gay community: In 2001, when Larry King remarked that "a lot of people" were mad at Christian when he won his case, Christian replied, "Yeah, especially the gays. ... I found out that I got a lot more vitriolic hatred from liberal gays than I did from conservative straight people. Straight people were great to me, because I think they found themselves in a position of, gee, if my wife or my husband hadn't told me, I'd know how he would feel. ... I think that liberal gays think that if you had AIDS, you couldn't do any wrong. You could go out and infect anyone you want, you're the victim. ... There is this whole victim mentality that we have, not just in the gay world, but in America now, that it's always somebody else's fault. ... A lot of the groups like Lambda, GLAAD, and amfAR, they didn't like me too much.

With an attitude like that, it's easy to see why they didn't.

Too, there is the question of Christian's relationship with Hudson. Hudson"s biographer Sara Davidson, was to have said: "By the time I met Rock... Marc Christian was living in his guest house, and Tom Clark, who had been his lover for many years before, was living in the house, and he — Marc was frozen out, he wasn't allowed to come in the house. He was holding on to his territory. It was a very strange scene."

I knew there was a reason I didn't like that guy.


Anecdote from The Larry King Show interviewing Mitchelson.

KING: You remember, as an onlooker then, Marvin, did you think Rock Hudson was gay? You lived here.

MITCHELSON: I lived here all my life.

KING: You heard the rumors...

MITCHELSON: I heard the rumors, but it just didn't seem like he was.

KING: No one looked less — I don't know if you look gay... Is there such a thing as looking gay?


I knew there was a reason I liked that guy.