I walked out of Pepsi Center alongside Al Franken last night:
Afterwards, I went to the Rolling Stone/Trojan Evolve "Condom-vention" where I watched Bill Maher deliver a raunchy and hilarious (if a bit old-school in the gender department) comedy routine. As you might expect, the place was scattered with jimmy hats. Towards the end I managed to catch up with former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elders, whom you may recall was canned from the Clinton Administration for (gasp!) suggesting masturbation is okay for teenagers.
A personal aside: I remember the day she was fired very clearly; I was visiting my mother’s classroom in Pennsylvania (she was an elementary school teacher, now retired) feeling horribly depressed and angry at Clinton. I admire Dr. Elders so much for her sensible, BS-free approach to health care, and am thrilled to have this picture. Props to my cartoonist friend Ward Sutton for taking it.
Elders spoke before I got there, even though I came straight over from the convention. But she did remark to us that abstinence-only "education" doesn’t work, and that teaching about condoms is the responsible thing to do. To echo that sentiment, we hear a lot of lip service from the right about "personal responsibility" — and if you ask me, realistic, science-based sex ed is part of that.