Rise & fall of the Surgeon General: the nation wasn't ready for Joycelyn Elders' blunt messages about sexuality - American Thought

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), May, 1997 by Paula Wilson

The nation wasn't ready for Joycelyn Elders' blunt messages about sexuality.

After Joycelyn Elder's resignation in December, 1995, the U.S. had no Surgeon General throughout 1996. How could the public and the media go from decrying the right and wrong ways to approach the health of the nation to utter silence on the matter? The issues did not go away, just the Surgeon General.

The problem with Joycelyn Elders was not with what she was saying, but the role she personally inaugurated as Surgeon General. The powers that be have decided that public talk on sexuality is inappropriate. By Elders' own account, however, the public dialogue on health-related issues must be a part of the Surgeon General's duty. This was a fundamental and entirely overlooked issue in the situation surrounding her dismissal.

In 1996, I interviewed Elders in Little Rock, Ark., where she has resumed her position as a professor in the Department of Pediatrics, University of Arkansas for Medical Services at Children's Hospital. Looking back at her experience in Washington, she explained that the bully pulpit was her instrument of power. She perceived her mission as Surgeon General to hold a public dialogue on America's health and welfare, maintaining that "The first thing that you have to do if you're really going to use power is you have to get people's attention; they've got to know who you are. You see if they hate you, they're still going to listen to what you say, and if they love you, they're really going to listen. The worst thing is for everybody to ignore you, and so I think the Surgeon General's office is the office where it is very important to be able to get people listening to you, thinking about it, and talking about it . . . that is where you get change." Whatever power Elders may have had, rhetorical or otherwise, was born out of the debate over publicly discussed issues pertaining to sexuality.

The psychology behind the issuing of that power to Surgeons General and the public discussion of private issues merits examination. First, in the midst of the debate between conservatives and liberals, a third and vital population virtually was left out of the dialogue--the libertarian Generation X. Second, the role of the Surgeon General is different now than it was 30 years ago because the circumstances surrounding America's national health are different. It is time to re-evaluate the services that office provides.

In an examination of the public exchange over Elders' rhetoric, consumers of her messages are delineated easily when their perspectives are divided into terms of generational orientation. Although these admittedly are sweeping generalizations, it is plausible to place the birthdates of conservative Republicans in the Silent Generation (192242), the White House Democrats as baby boomers (1942-62), and the most important audience for Elders' messages as the twentysomethings dubbed Generation X.

Generation X concerns virtually were ignored by the government, even though, as Elders points out, "I was targeting youth; I wanted them to really start thinking, and doing things, and making a difference for themselves, to really take care of each other." Furthermore, it is Elders' impression that the members of Generation X appreciated her message: "I got loads of letters from young people, and when I would enter a room to give a talk, they would all stand up. When I go to a college campus, I get a standing ovation almost every time before I say a word. And that's accepting you."

The government would do well to listen to the Xers. According to Karen Ritche in Marketing Generation X, by the year 2000, 79,800,000 Xers between the ages of 19 and 39 will comprise 30% of the U.S. population. Beyond these compelling demographic actualities lies the claim that Elders' rhetoric was appropriate for and embraced by them. Unlike any generation before them, Xers have had thrust upon them the forbidding custodianship of the nation's sexual health and future.

The literature on Generation X also includes Doug Coupland's Generation X, William Dunn's The Baby Bust, and Newsweek's 1994 article, "Myths of Generation X." These works suggest that Xers' values are influenced heavily by a broad definition of family, recessional economics, and diversity. Ritche says that Xers appear to be conservative libertarians, not apt to make quick decisions, but do make careful ones, and are willing to support free movement within both the marketplace and diverse structures of reality.

These ideological assimilations correspond to generational value orientations. They offer some explanation as to why Xers embraced Elders' rhetoric and were assured by the leadership role she created and assumed. Yet, at the same time, Republicans were enraged with Elders' message and Democrats generally remained unsupportive. Elders' rhetoric and the reconfiguration of the role of the Surgeon General were, in fact, very appropriate for Xers for a number of personal and sociopolitical reasons.