It is a simple formula for both comedy and political commentary:

Take a public figure (Sarah Palin) who holds disagreeable views (abstinence-only education). Zero in on an aspect of her personal life counter to those views (her own teen daughter, Bristol Palin, becoming pregnant). Reveal the comedic irony and/or hypocrisy of the public/private contrast. Repeat ad nauseam on blogs, 24-hour news channels, and late night talk shows.

We should all beware this construction. Though very easy to pull off—and often journalistically and comedically sound—it is a trap. And it will render us all hypocrites. Three lessons from history, after the jump.

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Last month, I wrote a story on why the government won’t fund local youth AIDS prevention group WAIT (or Washington AIDS International Teens). WAIT’s problem was this:

a. Their goal was stopping the spread of HIV.

b. Their methodology was abstinence.

c. The government only funds one or the other.

Last week, President Obama proposed to add another roadblock to their fight for funding by cutting abstinence-only cash from the budget altogether.

Now, groups like WAIT, which represent the most practical side of abstinence eduction—delaying sex only to prevent an uncurable deadly disease—will remain, well, pretty much unaffected. As I detailed in my piece, federally-funded abstinence-only education was always itself too much of a “comprehensive” strategy. In order to receive federal funding, abstinence groups couldn’t just work against AIDS—they also had to teach prevention of “out-of-wedlock pregnancy”; that “a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity”; and that “sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects.”

So while proponents of comprehensive sex education rejoice at the White House rule, some abstinence advocates, at least, aren’t lamenting the move: abstinence’s realists have always been left behind.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery.