Wouldn't it be great if you could only get AIDS from giving money to television preachers?

Boosler’s line is a piece of satirical moral arithmetic: it imagines a world where a deadly disease is contracted not through sex, blood exposure, or medical accident, but through a specific act she frames as ethically suspect—donating to television evangelists. The joke relies on shock and inversion, redirecting fear and stigma surrounding AIDS (especially prominent in late-20th-century U.S. culture) toward a critique of televangelism as exploitative or hypocritical. By proposing a “punishment” that fits the perceived offense, the quip attacks religious grifting and the commercialization of faith while also exposing how societies often try to assign moral blame to illness.