Film Critics As Nannies
In this Salon review of "How To Deal," Charles Taylor complains about fuddy duddy critics like Joel Siegel, who went on Good Morning America to warn parents to keep their daughters out of the new Mandy Moore movie. Why? As Taylor quotes from A.O. Scottís New York Times review: "How to Deal' is rated PG-13. Teenagers have sex. Old ladies smoke pot. Deal with it." Taylor takes it from there:

"America is willfully naive and hopelessly hypocritical about teen sexuality. We bemoan teen pregnancy rates and pretend to be worried about the threat of AIDS and then do everything we can to keep teenagers from getting sexual information or access to contraception and abortion. Trashing the already tenuous separation between church and state, we allow the religious right and other social conservatives to promote abstinence programs in schools. The abstinence advocates ignore the fact that teenagers will have sex, in hopes of instituting some Christian summer camp utopia where, instead, teens will hold hands at the malt shoppe.

The result is predictable. When you tell kids that condoms are no guarantee against AIDS -- instead of telling them that condoms are their best defense against AIDS if they are sexually active -- you are tacitly telling teenagers that there's no point in using condoms. We don't tell kids who take driver's education that the only guarantee of not being killed in a car accident is to never get into a car; we give them information that will increase their chances of being safe."