Jocelyn Elders' Greatest Hits (OregonMuse)

I hope you all remember the Surgeon-General appointed by Bill Clinton: Jocelyn Elders was one of the most bizarre human beings I have ever seen in public life, a compact little pile of fruits and nuts and every time she opened her mouth, all sorts of weird crap came out that would give spurwing plover the heebie-jeebies.

By today's standards, Bill Clinton was something of a centrist Democrat, but he managed to appointed to various posts a mind-boggling assortment of oddball kooks, demented liberal weirdos, and intellectual derelicts from the far left side of the aisle.

Anyway, on my hard drive, I found a collection of quotes of Ms. Elders that I pulled from some usenet newsgroup in the mid-90s. Below the fold are the quotes and I assure you I am not making any of them up:

From the usenet post:

Here's my best attempt to transcribe the quotes from Hillary Rodham-Clinton's
choice to be our nation's doctor, Jocelyn Elders, that appeared on the
Rush Limbaugh TV show on July 4, 1994, during his wall-to-wall Jocelyn
Elders Extravaganza. There are no typos. I merely tried to capture as best
I could the passion and melodrama she uses when spewing this stuff:

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From Feb. 93 answering the question "What are your priorities going
to be as Surgeon General?"

"Well my priorities are going to be to focus on preventive health, which
we've not done. Our top issue in that is to make every chiiild born in
Amerrrica a planned wanted chiiild, and to stop some of the social problems
that are impacting the health of this nation."

"How do you insure every child is born planned and wanted?"

"Well I feel that the way we dooo that we have to really start early.
We have to make health education available in all of our schools and we
must make the ab-contraceptive services avaiiiilable for our young people
that need them."

"What do you advocate in terms of sex education in schools? How early?"

"We start kindergarten and many people tell me it should start at
birth."

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From December 1993 after suggesting that drug legalization be studied:

"Much of the viiiolence and much of the problems associated with drug
use we know that people who use drugs you know if there's violence in the
home sixty percent of most of our violent crimes are associated with alcohol
or drug use so we know that there is a marked increase in drug use or
akohol use associated with crime. Whether in um many times they're robbing
stealing and all of these things to get money to buy drugs and I do feel
that we would markedly reduce our crime rate if drugs were legalized."

==================

From October 1993 regarding funding for AIDS research and the fact that most
of us will probably die:

"We know most of the people that die with heart disease and cancer are our
elderly population you know and we all will probably die with something
sooner or later and we've been investing certainly in cancer and heart
disease and I feel that we should continue, I'm not downplaying that.
But I'm saying that we are losing the people that's going to pay my Social
Security and that bothers me."

==================

January 1994 in the New York Times magazine:

"If I could be the 'condom queen' and get every young person who is
engaged in sex to use a condom in the United States, I would wear a crown
on my head with a condom on it! I would!"

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Also from October 1993 on finding a cure for AIDS:

"Senator, we know that AIDS is a ravage disease in our country that's
destroying our bright young people. We've not foound the currre for this
disease. We do not have a vaccine for this disease. The only thing we've
got is education and to tryyy and treat them as best we cannn. I feel that
if we do not find a vaccine, do not find a good drug, and we do not educate
our bright young people, Senator, we are going to looose our entire
society."

==================

From February 1994 on kids who smoke:

"By adopting cigarette smoking, young people are led to belllieve that they
are er are adopting an image of being members of the 5-S club: that they
are sllllim, they're sexy, they're soooociable, they're sophisticated, and
successful. It's ironic and tragic the teenager gets an image. The
tobacco company gets an addict."

==================

on how Medicaid started:

"I said obviously our Medicaid system had to be developed by a white
male slaveowner [Much applause in the background] because our present
system supports healthy uneducated people which can only be slaves."

==================

on what causes violence:

"What causes violence and what can we dooo to prevent it? Although many
facterrrs contribute to this epidemic, at it's ruut is poverty."

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on cigarette manufacturers:

"Each day the tobacco industry must recruit three thouuuusand bright young
people to join their army to replace those that quit or have diiied."

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on secondhand smoke:

"Chillldruun are held captive to adult management of their space. Unlike
adults, they can not negotiate for smoke-free environments and unlike
adults they can not simply get up and leave."

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perhaps the most famous one of all:

"We can deciiiide that we've got to keep the gunnnns out of the haaaands of
our chiiiilllldrunnn. We can make safer weapons. We can make safer
bullets. We can educate our parrrents on howwww to deeeeal with their
chillldrunnn....and we can continue to work and make like we made car
license, we can make require license in order to carry a gun."

==================

before a Congressional committee when pressed about her pro-drug-
legalization stance:

"Let me not do let me not you know my office and we have people well that
are really they are still working on it and they have not really of af uh
cun and they've not truly briefed me so I would not like I've already
made one m-m-mmistakement saying ye no no saying that what I felt we
needed to do a study and I want you to know that I have not indicated me
well enough yet and I I do that you know I might I might 100% wrong
but I so far what I've learned I haven't felt like that but I might be
you know you can't shouldn't make decisions on incomplete data."

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and finally a general collage of quotes from several different sources:

"We ordinarily think of viiiolence as a criiime and it is. But it's alllso
a public health problem because it kills and injures so many of our
people./

It's like a leaky bucket that if you've got 10 holes that need to
be plugged up and you plug up 5, all you've still got is a leaky bucket./

It's like dancing with a bear. When you're daaancing with a beaaar, we all
know that you can't get tiiired and sit down. You've got to waaait until
the bear gets tired and then you sit down./

I often say that our chillldrunnn are out in an oooocean surrounded by the shhharks of drugs, akohol, homicide, suicide, teen pregnancy, and we're sitting on the beach sipping from our fountains of 'Just Say No' morally right and whose values arethey going to teach./

And I fouuund out in our sociiiety a mammoth dragon. This dragon has many heads and many faces, each one uglier and more deadly than the other. We try in our communities to deal with these faces one at a time. But every time we deal with one face, the other ones gets uglier and bigger."
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posted by xgenghisx at 02:06 AM

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