The AIDS Ribbons’ Tangled Message: Why Some See Red : Debate: Activists are saying the symbol to raise awareness has become a hollow statement used to ‘alleviate guilt’ and make people feel comfortable with doing nothing.

When host Garry Shandling opened the 35th annual Grammy Awards a few weeks back he didn’t even mention the red ribbon on his lapel. He just joked that he should have worn another ribbon as well, “for those suffering in the 36% tax bracket.”

Born just two years ago, the simple red ribbon denoting support for AIDS care and research has become so ubiquitous at awards shows, it hardly needs an explanation. In this season of award shows, viewers will see ribbons worn by most of the celebrities. The appearance is of big-time concern. But to some AIDS activists, those little red ribbons are a mixed blessing.

The ribbons began as a break in tradition--a way of making a statement about the epidemic to the general viewing audience. But now that the symbol has become common, some are saying that while they appreciate the intent, the ribbon has been reduced to a hollow, politically correct statement.

Richard Jennings, executive director of the entertainment industry’s AIDS awareness and anti-discrimination agency, Hollywood Supports, says wearing a ribbon may in fact be an easy out. “People may think they’re doing their AIDS thing by wearing it,” he says. Still, he adds: “Overall, it’s been an incredible tool for getting out the message about AIDS.”

Some critics point to a most notable incident involving how superficial wearing a ribbon can be: During the 1992 Republican National Convention, First Lady Barbara Bush appeared on camera seated in the audience wearing a red ribbon. But she took it off before joining her husband on the podium. (Her office later explained she did not want “to distract from the President’s big moment.”)

“It was the most cynical use of the ribbon I have yet to see,” says Roger McFarlane, one of the original founders of the Ribbon Project, which brought the symbol to prominence.

“Wearing a ribbon should be no substitute for more affirmative action,” says James Hulse, a member of the ACT UP/LA activist group that has for several years promoted the AIDS awareness slogan: “Silence=Death.” Hulse says he believes wearing a ribbon for many can be “a cop-out. Ask them if they’ve donated money. Ask them if they’ve written to their congresspeople.”

One strong criticism of the ribbon came in a recent New Yorker magazine “Talk of the Town” article by David Seidner, who expressed “rage at the trivialization of this catastrophe.” The article was in response to a special award given to Visual AIDS for its promotion of the Ribbon Project by the Fashion Designers of America. Seidner, who has the disease, wrote “AIDS has become a red ribbon one can conveniently pin to a jacket, a dehumanized abstraction.”

In a letter sent to New Yorker editor Tina Brown, Visual AIDS founding director Patrick O’Connell responds: “The New Yorker (article) suggests that people wear red ribbons to ‘alleviate guilt’ and make themselves ‘feel comfortable without having to do anything.’ . . . Virtually every AIDS organization . . . is using it as a symbol of conscience. . . . Are these organizations and their volunteers wearing them ‘to alleviate guilt’?”

The ribbon phenomenon began in 1991, when, taking a cue from a 1973 Tony Orlando hit song, the nation was wearing yellow ribbons in support of the Gulf War.

Enter the Artists’ Caucus arm of Visual AIDS, which appropriated the ribbon idea in the spring of 1991. “If we could show this kind of concern for a war abroad, why not for this war at home?” O’Connell asks.

The red ribbon was born, “meant to be a public artwork, a grass-roots expression of compassion and concern, to be worn by individuals as a symbol of commitment to the fight against AIDS,” he says.

Aware of sympathy within the entertainment community, where so many of its members were feeling the effects of the disease, the group began by taking the ribbons to New York arts events, where they were enthusiastically embraced. Approaching the mass media was next.

The group decided to target the Tony Awards, which were just around the corner. In just 10 days, volunteers launched a letter-writing blitz to every presenter and nominee. Among the few to wear the ribbon that night were presenters Jeremy Irons and Tyne Daly. In the haste to get the project off the ground, however, no mention was made of the ribbons on the air.

The night of the Tonys, David Michaels, a Los Angeles-based producer and a governor of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, was in New York watching the awards with a good friend who would soon lose his battle with AIDS. They wondered what the ribbons meant. When Michaels returned a month later for his friend’s funeral, Michaels met Roger McFarlane and Tom Viola, directors of Broadway Cares/Equity Fight AIDS, which had joined forces with Visual AIDS for what was now being called the Ribbon Project. McFarlane and Viola had been hoping for a Hollywood connection.

Michaels happened to be vice chairman of the TV Academy for the Daytime Emmy Awards, which was about to be broadcast for the first time in prime time. He found enthusiastic support from Susan Simons, an officer of the academy and its chairwoman for the Daytime Emmys, who’d also watched the Tonys and wondered about the ribbons.

Together they roamed the pre-Emmy dinner, asking people to wear the ribbons and to mention them on the air. “Remember, at that time few people knew their significance and we had to explain to each one,” Simons says. A presenter that night, “Ed Asner had the first opportunity to speak of the ribbons; he made a simple and classy statement that they were to acknowledge people with AIDS and their caretakers.”

Asner, who had narrated the 1984 documentary “AIDS: Profile of an Epidemic,” says, “To me, wearing the ribbon means, ‘Lest we forget.’ The unhappy things of life tend to be glossed over in the joy of celebratory events. We cannot ignore the problem; we have to think about it and mention it in an effective way whenever we can.”

Michaels adds, “Right or wrong, celebrities wield a power for people to follow their examples. (Daytime Emmys producer) Dick Clark paved the way for the Ribbon Project on the West Coast by giving us the credibility to make it possible with other shows for greater exposure.”

Together Michaels and Simons volunteer to see that ribbons are distributed at just about every televised West Coast awards show. “The first year was difficult,” Michaels says. “The music awards shows were a breakthrough because they get to the kids who tend to think of themselves as immortal and especially need the message that AIDS can happen to anyone.”

Now the ribbon is scripted into the Daytime and Prime-Time Emmys, the Oscars, Grammys, American Music Awards, People’s Choice Awards, Golden Globes, Academy of Country Music Awards, ACE Cable Awards, Soap Opera Digest Awards, MTV Awards, Soul Train Awards, American Comedy Awards and more.

Michaels and his group will be supplying ribbons Monday for Academy Awards presenters and audience members.

“The ribbon is more than a symbol of AIDS,” says American Comedy Awards producer George Schlatter. “It’s a sign of the industry recognizing it can help.”

The ribbon has even sprouted its own cottage industry. Music Cares, the nonprofit outreach group of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, customized the ribbons with its logo and distributed them without outside help for this year’s Grammy telecast. Executive director James Berk estimated that “4,500 of the 6,000 distributed were worn that evening.”

Many celebrities now don their own ribbons before they get to an event. Some are enameled pins from the Red Ribbon Foundation, which sells the ribbon jewelry for $5 to benefit AIDS support programs. The group Hollywood Helps sells hand-designed beaded ribbons for $25, with proceeds directed to AIDS organizations within the entertainment industry.

The latest twist in the ribbon saga involves stripes of red and pink: the red for AIDS and the pink for breast cancer awareness.

Activists, while admiring the intentions, hope monies raised actually make it to the people who need it. “Rather than buying a ribbon,” Michaels says, “I’d like to see people making donations to AIDS organizations and making their own.”

Times staff writer David J. Fox contributed to this report.