THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, December 17, 1994 TAG: 9412160014
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 44 lines
Joycelyn Elders, just fired as surgeon general, is unrepentant. President Clinton, who fired her, is unapologetic. She's entitled to her views on controversial subjects. He's entitled to fire her for them. And fire her he had to, sooner or later.
He fired her midterm, which has something to do with the Republican sweep in November's congressional elections and his own political imperative to move middleward. It has more to do with Dr. Elders' swipes at Middle America.
The surgeon general's focus is the health of the nation. Dr Elders' focus was its unhealthier aspects - teen pregnancy, AIDS, substance abuse; and not just her focus but her remedies and rationales for them drew predictable fire. Her latest comment, that masturbation is ``part of human sexuality and . . . part of something that perhaps should be taught'' was the ``one too many'' the White House had to have known would happen. A president and his staff have more important, not to mention more politic duties than allowing as how instruction in masturbation isn't what schools are for.
Neither Dr. Elders' critics nor the media have always acknowledged the context of her remarks on masturbation: She made them in response to a question at a World AIDS Day conference, an appropriate forum for them. But her implicit leap from that specific conference to every classroom was all too typical of the kind of ``dialogue'' Dr. Elders has prompted since she became surgeon general. Her role in that dialogue has become spokeswoman for what senator and sociologist Pat Moynihan calls the ``deviating down'' of America: that is, accepting certain destructive behaviors as a norm, as a basis for broad public policy, when they are not norms and should not determine policy.
Still, every offending, offensive line Joycelyn Elders has uttered has a grain of truth and a kernel of wisdom for reasonable people to gnaw. She has a place in the national debate over values, mores and social ills - just not as surgeon general. by CNB