Comedienne Wanda Sykes just joined the list of celebrities who probably won’t get a Christmas card from Sarah Palin this year. Not that the wisecracking liberal was likely to be on the list anyway – have you seen the gay marriage bit?
But Wanda was at large last week in Atlanta with a number of other celebrities working to have their names removed from the Palin family newsletter list (I hear there’s a whole section on how to name a baby). So what did Martina Navratilova, Lily Tomlin, Big Boi and Sally Field all do that's against the Palin motto?
They designed timepieces for this year's IKEA It's About Time charity auction, with all the money going to fight teen pregnancy. OK, so I cooked this up a little bit - Sarah Palin wasn't actually there. With that kind of write-up, did you think she would be?
The auction was, however, timed just as teen pregnancy has been thrust back into the spotlight, first with the announcement that Palin's 17-year-old daughter is pregnant. It's been kept there by the media's (yeah, we suck, don't we?) repeated reference to the Alaskan governor's decision to use her line item veto to slash funding that would have helped keep teen moms in her state off of the streets. Then there was the announcement that the number of teen moms is on the rise for the first time in 15 years.
Which is why Jane Fonda's pet project, the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention (G-CAPP) could really use a little help from her friends at IKEA and in the biz last week. The program's Second Chance Homes section does exactly what Palin was against in Alaska - provides homes for homeless teenage moms so they can complete their education and learn parenting/life skills in a stable environment.
Their success results are staggering - less than 1 percent of the teen moms who go through Second Chance end up pregnant again. All of them attend school, with a number going on to secondary education. All of their children receive immunizations on time (which means they're also seeing a pediatrician on a regular basis).
And each has shown a decreased dependency on state programs - including WIC and food stamps. You know, a savings for the state - the type of thing a governor might want to see.
Image: Pennsylvania Public Health
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