The Randall Scandal story that ought to be writing itself
Ok, so earlier I was saying I thought it was weird that folks were getting all "gotcha" over the story that (in the statistical sense) abstractly implies that abstinence-only education works when the abrupt resignation of Randall Tobias *directly* implies it doesn't even work for high-level federal directors of abstinence-only campaigns!
Tim Noah of Slate.com, who I think is a very good reporter, at least mentions it but only as an aside.
Tobias' resignation was announced at 5 p.m. on a Friday, traditionally the hour for releasing bad news, because reporters are busy making weekend plans, and readers, at least in theory, pay less attention to news that comes out on a Saturday. The strategy seems to have worked in this instance, because neither ABC News nor the Post reported one highly relevant detail: Tobias is the Bush administration's leading advocate of abstinence-only programs abroad!
Find more juicy but irrelevant evidence of Tobias' talking the talk but not walking the walk here.
The rest of the article is a bit about inside baseball and a lot of really egregious quotes. (In keeping with another post from yesterday it turns out Tobias' most recent job involved requiring foreign aid recipients to denounce prostitution.)
But I still want to get back to the main point. As Noah makes clear in his quotations, Tobias wasn't an utterly clueless, Bush or Gonzales style empty suit. He was able to clearly articulate the adult abstinence (outside of marriage) programs his agency endorsed, and he was also able to clearly distinguish them from similar programs that put a heavier emphasis on condoms for reducing transmission of HIV.
In other words, he wasn't just a "heck of a job, Brownie" bench-warmer. He understood the programs, he could speak persuasively about the matter, and he could deftly debate the details with outright opponents or advocates for competing programs.
Knowing all that he *still couldn't actually do it!*
And get this. One can hear much twittering about Tobias-the-hypocrite who hired prostitutes even though he's married. (As if hiring prostitutes when you're not is ok?) Set aside those nervous adolescent chuckles, though, and an even larger issue arises. Tobias couldn't uphold abstinence-and-fidelity principles *even though he's married and therefore could have sex at home.*
How, one wonders, can we expect highly hormone-charged young people to keep their hands out of their own and their partner's pants when a 62-year-old married man with an authoritative grasp of abstinence-only policies is unable to stick with the program?
And how, one wonders, can journalists and pundits be so distracted by "huh huh huh he had Teh Sex" that they can pass up a chance to take down a federal government policy that costs on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars and encumbers on the order of tens of millions of matching funds for the (dwindling number of) states that choose to participate?
Look. Tobias hired women from a company offering "adult fantasy services." Chances are very good those women got his penis wet with their saliva and/or let him put his penis inside their bodies and move it around. That's called sex. Undersecretary Tobias is an adult and that's what adults do. Even CNN and Fox news anchors have sex (though you'd never believe it to hear them talk.) And unless he and the woman he married had an expressed understanding then he was a bit of a jerk for getting his penis wet with someone other than her. His behavior may be disgraceful in moral terms but otherwise it's pretty routine.
The real question, then, is not how he could have forgone abstinence while advocating abstinence, or how he could have been unfaithful while advocating faithfulness, or how he could have hired prostitutes while advocating restricting prostitution. Those are upside down questions. The real question is how could he have continued to advocate public health programs intended to address problems as serious as HIV transmission in Africa when his personal experience made it clear that those policies aren't, and perhaps *can't* be effective.
There's an integrity problem here, but it's not about who wets his whistle.
I'm just sayin'
So do you think that will result in a re-assessment of the aid programs for Africa and elsewhere to allow for contraception? Somehow I doubt it.
There has recently been mention of the World Bank removing mention of family planning from strategy documents in spite of health and women's empowerment being focus areas. There has been little coverage of it, and nothing seems to be happening to reinstate the strategies as far as I can tell.
[Yeah, the head of the World Bank takes time out of boosting his mistress's bonus to cut funding for family planning. As for the African aid programs, one of the reasons I keep pounding on Tobias as a failure instead of a hypocrite is that even if they replace him with a non-hypocritical program director it still won't change the outcome of the program. If the major media would just pick oup on *that* scandal then yeah, I think there might be a change in aid programs. Otherwise? No, it could continue failing, and thus killing people who otherwise might not die, for decades. Thanks, A. --fl]