I subscribe to US News & World Report each week. Most weeks, I can't decide whether to laugh or cry. Some samples from this week:
Page 16 - John Walters, the nation's newest drug czar, demonstrated that there actually are a few people in Washington with actual spines. He went on record as saying that the government's ubiquitous ad campaign designed to keep kids off drugs is not working. In fact, some kids may actually be more likely to use drugs after watching the TV ads. I guess that while TV can make kids want the latest snack food fad or soft drink, it's not too good at producing virtue. Gee, that's a surprise. Despite the prevalence of sniveling psychobabble, the decision to do drugs is primarily a moral one. Kids with strong moral beliefs against drug use won't use. As a society, we need to be raising children with morals, character and integrity, and TV ads can't do this for us.
Cover Story - It's a relatively long article, but the main points are that kids are doing more and riskier sexual behaviors at younger ages than ever before. The most interesting part of the article was the discussion of abstinence. Several people who claimed to be authorities on the subject indicated alarm that while kids are placing a higher value on “virginity” and postponing actual intercourse, the incidence of other sexual behaviors is rapidly increasing. This is now seen as a public health crisis. The article spent some amount of column inches making the point that many kids don’t consider behaviors like oral sex and anal sex to be “sex”, and are thus acceptable while still maintaining virginity. (Don’t worry, I am NOT going to talk about President Clinton here) The sex-ed advocates should be ecstatic at this news. They have been preaching for decades that kids should explore exactly these kinds of behaviors in order to avoid pregnancy while still being able to satisfy their “needs”. It is not surprising that many kids have embraced this message. It is also not surprising that these behaviors are leading to what is being called by many an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases of which kids are not even aware. There is a big push right now in Congress for “medically accurate” teaching on contraception. I wonder, will they also include “medically accurate” information about these diseases?
Comments? E-mail pseudopundit@hotmail.com
Page 16 - John Walters, the nation's newest drug czar, demonstrated that there actually are a few people in Washington with actual spines. He went on record as saying that the government's ubiquitous ad campaign designed to keep kids off drugs is not working. In fact, some kids may actually be more likely to use drugs after watching the TV ads. I guess that while TV can make kids want the latest snack food fad or soft drink, it's not too good at producing virtue. Gee, that's a surprise. Despite the prevalence of sniveling psychobabble, the decision to do drugs is primarily a moral one. Kids with strong moral beliefs against drug use won't use. As a society, we need to be raising children with morals, character and integrity, and TV ads can't do this for us.
Cover Story - It's a relatively long article, but the main points are that kids are doing more and riskier sexual behaviors at younger ages than ever before. The most interesting part of the article was the discussion of abstinence. Several people who claimed to be authorities on the subject indicated alarm that while kids are placing a higher value on “virginity” and postponing actual intercourse, the incidence of other sexual behaviors is rapidly increasing. This is now seen as a public health crisis. The article spent some amount of column inches making the point that many kids don’t consider behaviors like oral sex and anal sex to be “sex”, and are thus acceptable while still maintaining virginity. (Don’t worry, I am NOT going to talk about President Clinton here) The sex-ed advocates should be ecstatic at this news. They have been preaching for decades that kids should explore exactly these kinds of behaviors in order to avoid pregnancy while still being able to satisfy their “needs”. It is not surprising that many kids have embraced this message. It is also not surprising that these behaviors are leading to what is being called by many an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases of which kids are not even aware. There is a big push right now in Congress for “medically accurate” teaching on contraception. I wonder, will they also include “medically accurate” information about these diseases?
Comments? E-mail pseudopundit@hotmail.com
posted by Robert at
12:39 PM
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