November 24, 2001

6:18 PM

In death, J.D. O'Neal leaves few with fond memories“Jerry Dow O’Neal II owned The Current News, a small gay magazine. [...] By last month, when J.D. O’Neal committed suicide to avoid prosecution and shame, hardly anyone in Kansas City considered him a good friend. The 37-year-old white-collar crook and gay-rights opportunist had created enemies throughout the community. [...] ‘It was important for [J.D.] to appear successful.’ [...] ‘I’ll believe he’s dead when I see the body’ ”
posted by joeclark (3 comments total)

In other recent news, The San Francisco AIDS Foundation recently dropped Pallotta Teamworks as their event production company for the California AIDS Ride owing to their "profiteering".
posted by pudders at 7:59 PM on November 24, 2001

Wow. I remember reading about the glue-in-the-locks incident in the KC Star but, man, what an outcome.
posted by Qubit at 5:16 AM on November 25, 2001

Hmm, pudders, could've linked to the press release or the AIDS LifeCycle site, the replacement event they're planning. For better or worse, the Pallotta event -- still under the trademarked name AIDSRide -- will continue with a new beneficiary. It will be interesting to see what kind of administrative costs they incur for the event; certainly they'll have to cut back on promotion and rider support services, or have greater reliance on volunteers. You can't run an event like this with zero expenses and have it be consistently successful; Palotta may have over-corporatized the process, but it remains to be seen whether that was necessary for survival.
posted by dhartung at 9:15 AM on November 25, 2001