Playboy Interview: Joycelyn Elders

a candid conversation with the outspoken former surgeon general about sex, drugs, race, the religious right and what she really said about masturbation

To conservatives she's "warped," "dangerous" and "lunatic." To her supporters she's "noble," "heroic" and "gutsy." And to several thousand grateful parents in Little Rock she's simply "Doc." But there's one thing M. Joycelyn Elders, M.D. is not: the surgeon general of the U.S. Not anymore, at least. Not since she had the nerve to suggest that schools teach about masturbation as part of their sex education programs. And she said it out loud at the UN, no less.

As it turns out, the actual words were less dramatic than the hysteria they ultimately wrought: "[Masturbation] is a part of human sexuality, and it's a part of something that perhaps should be taught," she told a gathering at the World AIDS Day conference at the United Nations last December. "But we have not even taught our children the basics. And I feel that we have tried ignorance for a long time and it's time we try education."

That's all it took: Eight days later, and amid extensive media coverage, Elders handed in her resignation--the latest casualty of a faltering Clinton administration, another professional who had unknowingly stepped over the blurry line of political propriety to find herself out of a job.

But in Elders' case, if the final straw hadn't been a remark on masturbation, it might easily have been something else. In more than a decade in public life, Elders has earned her reputation as a walking, talking, blunt instrument. She has tweaked abortion opponents who "love little babies as long as they're in somebody else's uterus," telling them to "get over your love affair with the fetus." She has chided a "celibate and maledominated" Catholic church for opposing women's reproductive rights. She habitually makes reference to a "religious non-Christian right." And she has urged gay men and women to take on the people "selling out our children in the name of religion."

And, of course, in her brief but controversial stint as surgeon general, she ignited a firestorm by proposing that America study the effects of decriminalizing drugs. If, by conservatives' standards, that wasn't outrageous enough, barely two weeks later her 28-year-old son, Kevin, was arrested for selling an eighth of an ounce of cocaine five months earlier, embarrassing the administration and undermining any serious consideration of Elders' drug plan.

With the masturbation incident, the White House called it a day.

In the wake of her forced exit ("If she had not resigned, she would have been terminated," White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta told reporters), media commentary ran to the predictable extremes: Some claimed the former surgeon general was a troublemaking loudmouth and that it was about time she got the ax; others praised her for her honesty and vilified the administration for its cowardice, concluding that the good doctor was better off back home in Arkansas, far from the hypocrisy of Washington.

Yet many voices weighed in with a more balanced opinion. In its editorial verdict on the matter, "The New York Times" agreed that Elders was a fearless and honest professional with forward-thinking ideas. Yet, these were rocky times for the Clinton administration, the editorial noted, and despite Elders' good intentions, she had torpedoed herself with her inability to play the politics correctly. "As pedagogy," the "Times" said, "[the masturbation comment] might be defended. As politics, it was a reckless act of indifference to Mr. Clinton's fortunes.... This is not a White House that can be passing out ammunition to its critics."

The hot seat in the nation's capital is a long way from the dirt-poor town of Schaal, Arkansas, where Elders entered the world 61 years ago as Minnie Jones. Barely a wide spot on a dusty Arkansas road ("population 99, 98 when I'm away"), Schaal was home to sharecroppers such as the Jones family, a place where such conveniences as indoor plumbing were rare. The eldest of eight children, Minnie spent her childhood helping her mother raise seven siblings. She also picked and chopped cotton, baled hay, stripped corn and stretched raccoon skins with her father, who would then sell them to Sears for grocery money.

Along the way, she chose a new name for herself: Joycelyn, taken from the wrapper of a favorite peppermint candy. At 15, she won a church scholarship to Philander Smith College in Little Rock, and for the first time, the future surgeon general visited a doctor.

While in college, Joycelyn worked as a maid ("Scrubbing floors is a whole lot easier than picking cotton"), and eventually crossed paths with a black woman who was attending medical school. Inspired, she decided she could do the same. She graduated and enlisted in the Army, where she became a first lieutenant and trained to be a physical therapist. She enrolled at the University of Arkansas Medical School on the GI Bill as one of three black students--and the only black woman--in her class. It was there that she met and married Oliver Elders, now her husband of 35 years.

For Joycelyn Elders, medical school began a dizzying rise through the ranks of academic medicine: an internship and residency in pediatrics, a postdoctoral fellowship, a master's degree in biochemistry and a series of increasingly lofty educational positions. Ultimately, Elders became a full professor of medicine, teaching pediatric endocrinology. She was also recognized as a national authority on juvenile diabetes and author of some 150 scientific articles.

It was in 1987 that Elders' talent drew the attention of an ambitious young governor who hailed from a place 30 miles from Schaal, a place, as he would often remind us later, called Hope. But no sooner had Bill Clinton named Elders as director of health for the state of Arkansas than she began raising eyebrows: As the governor announced her appointment to the press--Elders standing by his side--a reporter asked her if she planned to provide condoms to Arkansas students. "Well, we won't be putting them on their lunch trays," the new director of health piped up, "but yes." The governor cringed, turned red, gulped several times--then gamely stood by his choice. The public Dr. Elders--corrupter of youth, scourge of the right--was born.

In her new post, Elders was impressively effective. She fought for and won a nationally renowned network of school-based clinics and improved prenatal care and childhood immunization programs in Arkansas. She barnstormed across the state, touting such commonsense public health initiatives as AIDS education, condom availability and age-appropriate sex education. Not surprisingly, abortion foes branded her a "mass murderer" and the "director of the Arkansas holocaust." But they soon learned that Elders (a) does not respond well to being bullied and (b) gives as good as she gets.

In 1993, when Bill Clinton moved to the White House, he brought his favorite health specialist with him. His appointment of Elders as surgeon general prompted a bruising confirmation fight, but once again, the plainspoken Elders prevailed: The Senate confirmed her by a vote of 65 to 34.

Then came her turbulent 15-month run as surgeon general, the ill-fated day at the UN and her one-way ticket back to Little Rock, where she resides today with Oliver (now a retired basketball coach), working as professor of pediatric endocrinology at Arkansas Children's Hospital.

Behind the public storms, the years have brought a more private adversity to the Elders family. She lost a brother and a foster daughter in separate murders. But through it all, Elders has kept her focus on her one true obsession: the children. Her own, her patients', her nation's. Perhaps it's her more than three decades spent in the company of small children and elected officials that have taught her to reduce big ideas to simple words. Take her logical view of sex education: "If we teach kids what to do in the front seat," she says, "we should teach them what to do in the backseat, as well."

Such homespun homilies are a bracing antidote to the hard-core policyspeak in the nation's capital. To capture more of that, we sent New York journalist David Nimmons, whose most recent "Playboy Interview" was with outspoken AIDS activist Larry Kramer, to Arkansas. Here's Nimmons' report:

"I arrived at an utterly humble clapboard house off a freeway in a black neighborhood of Little Rock shortly after dawn. I knocked at the door, curious as to what a fire-breathing, destroyer-of-family-values radical actually looks like. I was met by a short woman wearing a friendly smile and reminding you for all the world of your favorite grandmother. That is, if your grandmother were Harriet Tubman and held a half-dozen advanced medical degrees.

"It took about 30 seconds to figure out that Joycelyn Elders is titanium wrapped in layers of easy Arkansas charm. She manages to be at once funny, warm, unpretentious and totally in command. In one breath, she offers me honey buns ('I like mine heated just a minute in the microwave') and lets me know that I'd better get started, or 'our chat may not last as long as you think it will.'

"Our interview began at her dining room table at 7:00 a.m. and continued in the car on the way to her midday speech at the local Kiwanis Club. Then she headed to the Children's Hospital, where she spent the rest of the day reviewing charts, seeing patients and teaching. Everywhere we went, people recognized her and smiled, welcoming her back to Arkansas. She knew many of the well-wishers by name, and an amazing number of them thanked her for having helped their children.

"Throughout our talks, Elders was enormously likable and disarmingly open. Her words, by turns scalding and introspective, came laced with a razor-sharp sense of humor. Beneath it all, she radiates a supreme self-confidence. I am reminded of the best description of--and highest compliment paid to--Dr. Elders, unwittingly made by archconservative congressman Robert Dornan on the House floor: 'It seems she tells the truth on anything and everything. No matter what it is, she lets out her feelings to the detriment of the White House.'

"Well, Dornan got it half right, In a political climate that values mendacity over audacity, it seems the outspoken Dr. Elders simply may have had too much of the right stuff, Judge for yourself."

[Q] Playboy: Last year you were reading the medical chart for 250 million Americans. Now you're making the rounds in a Little Rock hospital. How does that feel?

[A] Elders: Wonderful. I've enjoyed going to the clinic and seeing patients. I've received boxes of letters, and 99 percent of them are warm and positive and supportive. You know, in Washington we tracked letters to my office, and they were more than 90-to-one positive.

[Q] Playboy: So Americans supported the issues you were talking about?

[A] Elders: Absolutely. Every study that has been done really supports comprehensive health education programs in our schools, from kindergarten through twelfth grade. So I've not felt in any way that I was talking about things we shouldn't talk about. Nor do I feel that I was not on the same level as the American people.

[Q] Playboy: If people liked the message and the messenger, how did you wind up back here?

[A] Elders: Well, just because the American people liked the message and the messenger doesn't necessarily say that our politicians were listening to the people. There is a strong, solid 30 percent of the population to the far right. They're very organized and vocal. They write lots and lots of letters, and they never stop.

[Q] Playboy: How can you be so sure of your opposition? Maybe people simply didn't like what you had to say.

[A] Elders: You have to organize to get people to respond. [My opponents] would advertise--with big advertisements--in their churches. I saw their bulletins. They would send negative advertisements about me to schools and groups, telling people that if they wanted to stop this they had to send money. There were money-raising gimmicks.

[Q] Playboy: You were raised a Methodist, went to a Methodist school and your brother is a minister. Yet you were hounded out of office by conservative Christian attacks. How do you make sense of that?

[A] Elders: Well, see, I never call those people Christians. I call them the very religious non-Christian right. They are not the Christians I know about. They are the Jerry Falwell-Pat Robertson Christians. They pay homage to religious economists.

[Q] Playboy: To religious----

[A] Elders: Economists. People who use religion to get money from people who don't know better. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: Who are you talking about specifically?

[A] Elders: The fundamentalist, exclusive people who want to make choices for everybody else, who want everybody to be like them, who put themselves on God's judgment seat. Well, first of all, I don't feel they know enough. I don't feel they're good enough. And I don't feel they love enough.

[Q] Playboy: They'd respond to that by saying they are just God-fearing Christians who exercise their constitutional rights.

[A] Elders: It's nice to say that, but where was the church during the Holocaust? Where was the church when the Indians were sent off to reservations? Where was the church when black men were held in slavery for 200 years? You know, those God-fearing Christians we're talking about were often the leaders of those kinds of efforts and initiatives.

I am very involved with the church and I support it. But there's an awful lot of difference between being religious and being Christian.

[Q] Playboy: Explain the difference.

[A] Elders: To me, Christianity is the way we act, what we do. Religion is something we kind of belong to, like a frat. Yet there are religions that are so exclusive--they exclude gays and lesbians, minorities, single mothers. They exclude people if they don't do certain things and act a certain way. Real Christianity--real, true churches--are inclusive. They include all of us with all of our faults. They try to make the church, if you will, a hospital for the sinners rather than a haven for the people who feel they're saints.

[Q] Playboy: What is the so-called non-Christian right's vision for America?

[A] Elders: To be a dittohead. They're dittoheads. Their parents tell them what they should think, what they should believe, whom they should exclude, whom they should attack. They write one letter and reproduce it a million times so the president gets a million letters against me. They're very well organized and a powerful force. I now understand a lot better how Hitler became so powerful.

[Q] Playboy: Do you see parallels between the religious right and the fascist right?

[A] Elders: Yes, I do. If you get large groups of people--and they almost have enough--you really take control.

[Q] Playboy: In what ways did the religious right target you?

[A] Elders: They put out letters. They held seminars. They educated people on how to think, what to say, how to disrupt meetings. It got to the point where I knew who they were at the meetings just by the way they asked me questions. They all asked the same question in the same way. They had no idea what they were asking, and if you followed it up, they didn't know what the next question should be. They were everywhere I went--and I made 308 speeches the first year as surgeon general. Can you imagine a group organized well enough to have somebody picketing everywhere I spoke, all over this country? Even when I gave two or three speeches a day? The only way they got media attention was to carry signs and protest against me.

[Q] Playboy: But why were you their target in the first place?

[A] Elders: I was only a part of their target. They're really after the presidency, OK? It just happened that I was a target they could use to raise money for their religious economists. Face it: If I had been up there saying everything they wanted to hear, nobody would know who the surgeon general was. So, obviously, the things I was saying must have gotten to them. Otherwise, there would have been no reason to target me. I'm a nobody.

[Q] Playboy: You bring to mind another controversial surgeon general. You and Dr. C. Everett Koop both have a bluntness people admire. Where did your outspoken streak come from?

[A] Elders: Probably my grandma Minnie, who I was named for. She always said you're supposed to be honest and tell the truth. And if you see something that's not right, you're supposed to say something about it.

[Q] Playboy: Some might suppose that the daughter of an African American sharecropper growing up in rural Arkansas in the Forties would have been told to clam up and keep her head low just to get by. Obviously, you weren't.

[A] Elders: Our black teachers instilled in us that we were somebody and we could make it. We may not have gotten as much reading, writing and arithmetic, but we were taught a lot about how to be decent human beings. They taught me that I had to have an education--and I had to be better than you--to get even near the same level as you. They taught me not to become upset if an opportunity came up and I didn't get it because I was black, even if I knew I was the best person. They told us, "'Don't be upset' doesn't mean 'don't keep trying.' Be the best you can be." It was almost a ritual.

I was always taught to be honest and truthful. I believed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when he said, "The day we see the truth and refuse to speak it is the day we begin to die."

[Q] Playboy: As surgeon general, you certainly spoke out. Why do you think President Clinton chose you?

[A] Elders: He wanted the message that I was putting out. He thought the country wanted that change. He thought America was ready to move forward with educating its children, educating its people--to really talk openly and honestly about sex. To stop the spread of AIDS. To reduce teenage pregnancy. The president thought the country was ready for that message.

[Q] Playboy: Was he right?

[A] Elders: I think the country is ready. But what we hadn't planned on was the Rush Limbaughs and the dittoheads.

Listen, he's probably the best communicator in America.

[Q] Playboy: Rush Limbaugh?

[A] Elders: Yeah. I may not like what he says, but he sells. He uses technology in a way that's believable. And that's an art form.

[Q] Playboy: When you took the job, did you think your political role might conflict with your outspokenness?

[A] Elders: No. I'd never had a problem when the president was governor, so I didn't really foresee it being a problem in Washington.

[Q] Playboy: Some suggest that your role was to say things the president couldn't--or wouldn't--say. Do you agree?

[A] Elders: That wasn't my role at all. The president wanted and expected me to speak out about the things we needed to do to improve the health of America. He is very committed to that. But when he began to feel that America wasn't ready for that--and he knew that I was probably not going to change--well, then he needed to change surgeon generals.

[Q] Playboy: But if President Clinton wasn't comfortable with your message, why did he appoint you? And if he was comfortable with it, why did he fire you?

[A] Elders: He was comfortable with my message when he appointed me. But a lot of things were changing in Washington after the November election. When you see something going in a certain direction, you'd be a fool not to respond.

[Q] Playboy: The president has known you for more than 15 years. In a relatively short 15 months, what could have changed so dramatically?

[A] Elders: Being the president, he may not have wanted to do things the way I was out there talking about doing them. And there's nothing wrong with that.

[Q] Playboy: You don't think that reflected his belief--or lack of belief--in your stands or principles?

[A] Elders: It doesn't necessarily matter what somebody believes inside. What matters is that you make the correct decision based on good, sound principles and do what's right for the country.

[Q] Playboy: Was letting you go right for the country?

[A] Elders: It was his version of what was right for the country. Again, he has that right. That's why he's president, so he can say and do what he feels is right for the country.

[Q] Playboy: Even if that means killing the messenger?

[A] Elders: If that means Joycelyn Elders has to leave, that's what he has to do. To me, that's a good leader. I've always felt that business is business.

[Q] Playboy: At this moment, President Clinton's choice to replace you, Dr. Henry Foster, is having a pretty rough preconfirmation fight of his own. What do you make of that?

[A] Elders: Well, he's going through holy hell right now. But he's been a wonderful physician--a real beacon for the poor and powerless--and I think he's an excellent choice for surgeon general.

[Q] Playboy: By the time this interview is published, his confirmation could be under way. If you were a betting woman--are you a betting woman?

[A] Elders: [Laughs] Oh, I've bet on some things in my life.

[Q] Playboy: What kind of odds would you give Dr. Foster on his confirmation?

[A] Elders: I feel that he will be confirmed. And if he isn't, the women of this country should stand up and make politicians pay in the worst way: by sending them back home.

[Q] Playboy: What do you make of the allegations that the issue isn't about Foster performing abortions in his career; it's the fact that the number of those abortions keeps growing, implying that the administration is once again dealing in half-truths?

[A] Elders: But it is about the abortions. It's about the politicizing of women's health. And we can no longer allow politicians to use our uteruses that way.

[Q] Playboy: And what of the charges that Foster was aware of the Tuskegee experiment in which black patients were permitted to suffer untreated from syphilis as part of medical research?

[A] Elders: Impossible. The Tuskegee experiment started in 1932, before Dr. Foster was even born. He had nothing to do with those experiments. We all know they were unacceptable and horrible, but to lay the blame on Dr. Foster is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

[Q] Playboy: But, hypothetically, what if it turns up that he did know about----

[A] Elders: Then that information would be wrong, you know. He just couldn't be a part of it.

[Q] Playboy: OK, then let's not put this on Foster specifically. Do you think anybody who was involved in the Tuskegee experiment should be allowed to be surgeon general?

[A] Elders: Listen, I've always said that you can never use a single-issue position to make global policy. Anytime you start doing that, you're going to make bad mistakes.

[Q] Playboy: Do you talk with Dr. Foster?

[A] Elders: Sure. I spoke with him just last week.

[Q] Playboy: You're friends?

[A] Elders: Yes. We went to medical school together. He was ahead of me. He and my husband played together on the football team.

[Q] Playboy: If you could give him one piece of advice right now, what would it be?

[A] Elders: I'd tell him to be himself. That's more than good enough to become the surgeon general.

[Q] Playboy: Let's return to you. What was your proudest accomplishment as surgeon general?

[A] Elders: Increasing Americans' awareness of what is going on with adolescents. I was very pleased with being able to actively and openly talk about AIDS and condoms. I increased the focus on the problem of teen pregnancy. And, yes, Americans probably talked more about masturbation than they ever did in the history of the country.

[Q] Playboy: OK, here's your chance to turn history back and tell America exactly what you meant last December at the United Nations. Do you think encouraging masturbation----

[A] Elders: Listen, I don't think that anybody is really talking about encouraging masturbation.

[Q] Playboy: OK then, what were you thinking when you suggested that masturbation be taught?

[A] Elders: We weren't talking about teaching the how-to. We were just talking about teaching against the lies--that if you are doing self-stimulation, it should be done in private and it won't cause you harm. This was at the UN, with a lot of African countries whose HIV rates are, in some places, 50 percent and who are talking about alternative methods of sexual release to prevent the spread of AIDS.

[Q] Playboy: Then since you're not surgeon general anymore, tell us: What's the one thing every American male knows about masturbation and isn't saying?

[A] Elders: Studies have shown, I think, that 90 percent of the people know masturbation happens and they do it. But they will never admit it--in private, maybe, but not in public.

[Q] Playboy: So you're saying, basically, everybody masturbates.

[A] Elders: Well, that's what the studies say: 70-plus percent of females and 90 percent of males.

[Q] Playboy: Even Newt Gingrich?

[A] Elders: Well, they do say 90 percent--he might be in the other ten percent. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: Do some people actually believe that if they don't talk about masturbation, teenagers won't do it?

[A] Elders: I don't think people are that naive. We've been taught for a long time that you'll go blind, you'll go crazy. Or hair will grow on your hands. We've been taught all these things. We grow up with these taboos and they're hard to get rid of. I say: Teach children the facts and not the lies we've been espousing. Teach them openly and honestly.

[Q] Playboy: Dr. Spock recommended that parents openly discuss masturbation with their kids, and during the Reagan years, Surgeon General Koop advocated using condoms. Why can they talk about these things, and you can't?

[A] Elders: I think this was about far more than masturbation. This was just another tool that the religious right put in its arsenal to help destroy Joycelyn Elders. You know, it probably would have gotten down to this sooner or later.

[Q] Playboy: So the issue here is something bigger than masturbation?

[A] Elders: Yes. Yes. I hope so. Please. Let's get real.

[Q] Playboy: The media reported that you had been given at least three warnings at various times, including one by White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta.

[A] Elders: I never talked with Mr. Panetta but once in my life: when he called and asked me to resign. There was this idea that I had been taken to the woodshed and been warned. But he never talked with me.

[Q] Playboy: Had others?

[A] Elders: Donna Shalala talked with me the December before, when I said we should study drugs.

[Q] Playboy: So you received one warning?

[A] Elders: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: Period? That's all?

[A] Elders: Donna Shalala and her chief of staff talked with me, saying, "We all have to be on the same team and be careful about what we say." They said they were talking to everybody--but to me first. This was after the November election.

[Q] Playboy: So there wasn't a history of "Curb your tongue, don't go so far out"?

[A] Elders: No. Maybe they talked, but they didn't talk to me.

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about Washington. What's the one thing you saw there that would appall ordinary Americans?

[A] Elders: The way elected officials behave--the bickering and infighting and partisan politics. They really aren't concerned about what's right and good and best for the people of America. Their concerns are "Get my bill passed" or "Get my amendment passed." It's political posturing. They behave like adolescent boys. Mostly, our politicians exist because people are ignorant and don't know what's going on. I'm amazed at what we put up with. You can't have a democracy and an illiterate society at the same time.

[Q] Playboy: Having spent most of your life as one of a few black females in a white male system, what have you learned?

[A] Elders: It's all about power. It's not about people. It's not about blacks or whites. It's not about women. White men like being in control. They like the power, and as long as they keep everybody submerged, they will be in power.

[Q] Playboy: Are white men different from anybody else in that way?

[A] Elders: Probably not, except that they have the power, and the rest of us are trying to get a piece of it.

[Q] Playboy: Over the past few years we've learned some sobering lessons about black women and power. Do you see any similarities among you, Lani Guinier and Anita Hill?

[A] Elders: Again, it's that need for power. The white male structure will fight and oppose any female it sees rising in power. We're easier targets to knock off. We don't have a strong power base.

[Q] Playboy: As women?

[A] Elders: As African Americans first, as women second. Maybe some of both. Go back through the civil rights movement. Every black man--or anybody, for that matter--who was trying to speak out and move forward, something happened to them. All these scare tactics were used against them.

In the old days, many of these people rode around and hid behind sheets. We called them the Ku Klux Klan. Then, all of a sudden, you couldn't really do that anymore--it wasn't fashionable. So they became the right-to-life movement and they hid behind women's uteruses. Now, all of a sudden, they're the Christian Coalition. And they're trying to hide behind God. You know, it's repulsive to me, because I've seen them before. They're the same people. They haven't changed. They simply changed what they're about.

[Q] Playboy: Are you their worst nightmare?

[A] Elders: Probably. You know, they can't stand that I'm not afraid; fear is a powerful weapon. But that sends a message to the rest of us: We've got to organize our coalitions and become just as powerful as they are.

[Q] Playboy: Would things be different if we had a Senate full of women?

[A] Elders: Women, for the most part, use their power, prestige and position to try to make a difference in the lives of people, to make the world a better place. Men, on the other hand, look at power more in terms of money and control.

[Q] Playboy: So if the scales were tipped in the other direction and women were in charge, what difference would we see?

[A] Elders: We'd see a great shift in how we treat our children. We wouldn't have one in four children being poor. We would have more early childhood education centers, more good day care, better schools. We'd have universal health care. Women would consider it most important that we have healthy, educated, motivated children with hope. They would know that that's the best way to prevent violence in our streets, to prevent crime and teenage pregnancies. And we would get off this big fight over sexuality.

[Q] Playboy: Thousands of Republican women might not agree. They would argue for a radically different vision of society.

[A] Elders: True, but many of those women have learned from Republican men that you get in power by making people think you're going to get crime off the streets and put welfare mothers to work. But down through the years in Washington, people have said these things and nothing has changed.

[Q] Playboy: Let's get your quick opinion on a few of the players in Washington, starting with the most visible woman in the cabinet, Attorney General Janet Reno.

[A] Elders: I have an awful lot of respect and admiration for Attorney General Reno.

[Q] Playboy: Based on what?

[A] Elders: Based on her outspokenness and her programs. She's concerned about children, and she's fighting to get the right things in place to make a difference. She's being fought hard, but she's still there, still fighting.

[Q] Playboy: What about Hillary Clinton?

[A] Elders: Hillary is the best facilitator I've ever known. She can get a group to come into a room, really work together and arrive at a major decision. I have a lot of admiration and respect for Hillary.

[Q] Playboy: Newt Gingrich.

[A] Elders: I think. . . . [Long pause]

[Q] Playboy: Now, don't get political on us.

[A] Elders: No, no, I'm not going to get political on you. I'm just trying to decide how to say what I want to say. I think Newt Gingrich is a very smooth politician. His interest is with himself. He's not concerned about children or America or the people. He's only concerned about building him. And he will use any means possible to do it.

[Q] Playboy: What is your professional opinion of his Contract With America? Miracle cure, placebo or snake oil?

[A] Elders: Snake oil.

[Q] Playboy: What about the specific ideas embodied in the contract?

[A] Elders: Most are ideas they are trying to sell to Rush Limbaugh and to other men.

[Q] Playboy: Will they succeed?

[A] Elders: There is that possibility. But sometimes you can succeed only to discover that what you get may not be what you want. The only way you can have people who are big and at the top is by having people at the bottom. If you destroy all of middle America, then you've really destroyed the top, too.

[Q] Playboy: And the Contract With America will destroy middle America?

[A] Elders: I think the Contract With America very much hurts all of America.

[Q] Playboy: Moving on: What is your opinion of Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala?

[A] Elders: Umm....

[Q] Playboy: She was your boss.

[A] Elders: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: What is she like?

[A] Elders: No comment.

[Q] Playboy: No comment?

[A] Elders: I think Donna Shalala is----Well, she has a Ph.D. in political science. I think she used her political science.

[Q] Playboy: What about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas?

[A] Elders: I think Clarence Thomas is an Uncle Tom. [Silence]

[Q] Playboy: No more on that for us?

[A] [Elders remains silent.]

[Q] Playboy: OK. Last on the list: Senator Jesse Helms.

[A] Elders: Mr. Helms is the typical white, Southern, male bigot, who uses his power and his bigotry to try to destroy people. I've never known anything he has done that's positive.

[Q] Playboy: So who in Washington do you find most worthy of respect?

[A] Elders: Other than the president, the person I probably have the most respect for is Ted Kennedy. He's the Washington person I would most want to be like.

[Q] Playboy: Why?

[A] Elders: He knows where he is and his values are in the right place. He has a super style. And he goes all out to sell a proposition. He cares about kids, and he's willing to stand up and say it.

[Q] Playboy: Let's back up: You praise the president, whom you have known for years. Right now, a lot of Americans feel that they don't know him. Fair?

[A] Elders: I think that's fair, yes.

[Q] Playboy: So tell us: Who is this guy?

[A] Elders: He's a brilliant, well-motivated man who cares deeply about this country and wants to do something that's really outstanding as a leader. He wants to make a difference for all Americans.

[Q] Playboy: So why do voters have such a hard time understanding what he actually stands for?

[A] Elders: Sometimes we want to do something that's right and good--to do everything, for everybody. And sometimes. . . . It's painful for him to hurt anybody, you know. Very painful.

[Q] Playboy: You're describing a man with the best intentions, but one who finds it difficult to make hard choices. Isn't leadership all about making tough calls?

[A] Elders: But we want people to find it difficult to make the hard choices. We want those kinds of people as our leaders, people who have compassion and who feel. I think it was harder for President Clinton to let me go than it was for me. We don't want people who have no feeling, who don't care, who just brush people aside. Because if we have those kinds of people, then we have a callous, noncaring society. I don't think that's what we want.

[Q] Playboy: So help us understand Bill Clinton's core values. What does hereally stand for?

[A] Elders: He absolutely believes in what is good and right, and he wants to do what's best for this country.

[Q] Playboy: But what specifically will he go to the mat for?

[A] Elders: He'll go to the mat for anything he feels violates the basic principles of American society.

[Q] Playboy: You are painting a picture at odds with what a lot of America sees.

[A] Elders: If we didn't have all these people throwing darts at him all the time. . . . You know, I thought darts were thrown at me, but never the kinds of darts they're throwing at the president. We should be thinking that he is the most wonderful president we've ever had. Instead, the religious non-Christian right and the Republicans are working their way into office, and we are standing on the sidelines allowing a good, honest, bright, hardworking man to be beat up. Somehow, the American people won't stand up to the dittoheads.

[Q] Playboy: What do you see as the administration's key accomplishments so far?

[A] Elders: I think this president has gotten far more done than many we've had in the past. Certainly he's turned the country around in terms of the sliding unemployment--that's much less. Our economy is really doing better. Part of that is Nafta and the other agreements that came about. Family leave was important and made a difference. The president fought to get rid of the gag rule, which said we can't tell poor women about pregnancy options. Now you can get all the information you want and do what you want. That's important. He has almost doubled the funding for early childhood education in the Head Start program. We never hear about those things. All we hear about is the junk that nobody cares about. The other side only uses it to beat up the president.

[Q] Playboy: So even after what happened to you, you have great faith in the man?

[A] Elders: Yes, I do. It's much more important for him to be president for another four years--to carry out his plan--than for me to be the surgeon general.

[Q] Playboy: When you took the job, did you anticipate that so much of it would be spent talking about sex?

[A] Elders: No. We have this society in which you can't talk about sex--this puritan, Victorian kind of society. Sex has been taboo forever. Still, we have the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the industrialized world, AIDS is rising rapidly among our teenagers, more than 3 million teens contract syphilis or gonorrhea every year. Yet we deny that our children have sex--even though 75 percent of them tell us that they do.

[Q] Playboy: Let's explore that further: What are the big lies America tells itself about sex?

[A] Elders: The big lies? That we should abstain until marriage. I think that's a big lie. We have proof that it's a lie.

[Q] Playboy: With all due respect, as surgeon general you preached that doctrine.

[A] Elders: That's true. But when you talk about it to five- to 15-year-olds, everybody promotes that. Past the age of 15, we know that children are likely to be sexually active, so we want them to have the information to make decisions. The time to teach abstinence is when they aren't dealing with those problems. If we wait until their hormones are raging, we're doing too little, too late.

[Q] Playboy: Was abstinence the message you got when you were growing up?

[A] Elders: We were taught abstinence in our town, in our school, in our church. We got the idea that you shouldn't engage in sex until you are married. If somebody got pregnant, it was a big hushedup thing, or they moved out of the community. They did teach us: "Good girls don't do it until they get married." Anybody who did it was no longer good.

[Q] Playboy: So there was a lot of shame attached?

[A] Elders: Yes. A lot of shame. A lot of shame.

You know, people talk about going back to the good old days. That's just a lie. Teenage pregnancy was higher then than it is now. There were fewer unmarried pregnant teens back then, but more shotgun weddings. There were more "eight-month" babies that weighed eight pounds. The sex and the hormones and the people have not changed.

[Q] Playboy: Is there any evidence that counseling abstinence works?

[A] Elders: Lots of studies show that children who have comprehensive sex education are more likely to delay sex for nine months. That may not seem like a long time, but it's longer than for those who've not had any education. We need to teach responsibility so kids can make responsible decisions. Some will choose to abstain; we should support that choice. Some will not, and we need to support that choice, too.

[Q] Playboy: How?

[A] Elders: By educating them, making sure they know about condoms and other contraceptives, and how to protect themselves. We can't make that happen by trying to legislate morals.

[Q] Playboy: How do you respond to those who say that encouraging condom use ostensibly encourages kids to have sex?

[A] Elders: I say to those people: You have insurance on your house and car, but you don't go out and burn down your house and wreck your car just because you have the insurance, do you?

[Q] Playboy: So abstinence is big lie number one. Any others?

[A] Elders: That our children know nothing about sex--that we need to have this conference the day they get married.

We don't give them the facts. We seem to want our children to be ignorant. We don't want them to have the knowledge to make decisions. They see pictures all day on TV, and hear very sexually explicit songs. Yet we feel that when we tell them "no," we've done our job.

[Q] Playboy: After 30 years of studying the development of children, what can you conclude about childhood sexuality?

[A] Elders: That our children--that we--are human beings. Sexual beings. And that we all need this love. The more our young people know and understand about sexuality, the less they'll feel the need to experiment. The how-tos of sex--nobody needs to teach anybody how to. God taught us how to.

[Q] Playboy: So God was really the first sex educator?

[A] Elders: That's right. He endowed us with all the things we need to know. We don't need any lessons.

[Q] Playboy: What would Dr. Elders' sex education program look like?

[A] Elders: I'm not a sex educator, but I know you have to teach children to feel good about themselves. You have to teach them that there are certain places no [other person] should touch. If that happens, they need to tell somebody. Twenty-plus percent of young women and 13 percent of young men have been sexually abused before the age of 18. More children are abused in our country than in almost any other country.

[Q] Playboy: What else would you teach?

[A] Elders: We need to teach our young people that sexuality is normal. It's wonderful. It should be between consenting adults, and you have to take on certain responsibilities. Protect yourself and your significant other. If you aren't ready to have children and you don't want to risk AIDS, you should know about contraceptives and condoms so you can protect yourself.

[Q] Playboy: You talk about sex being something wonderful, something to celebrate, something God-given. So why would people want to delay that?

[A] Elders: There's a heavy responsibility that goes with it. Sometimes our children don't understand and appreciate the consequences--of sexually transmitted diseases, of AIDS, of unplanned, unwanted pregnancies.

[Q] Playboy: Is there a big lie we tell about women's sexuality?

[A] Elders: Yes--that women are not supposed to enjoy sex and that they're here to serve men. And that the way for men to have power is to keep women barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.

[Q] Playboy: What do men need to know about women's sexuality?

[A] Elders: That women don't really want to be sexual objects. They want to be human beings. Women get a lot of sexual pleasure out of things that aren't just the physical act of sex. Women enjoy a lot of the other things that are part of the buildup, not just the act.

[Q] Playboy: Explain something to us. You grew up in an era and in a part of the country that did not celebrate sexuality--in a traditional home and church.

[A] Elders: That's right.

[Q] Playboy: So how did you get so comfortable with sex?

[A] Elders: Well, I'm not sure. I don't remember getting many messages at home, either positive or negative. We had lots of dogs and cats and cows and pigs, so I learned some of this related to animal sexuality.

[Q] Playboy: But what made this girl from rural Arkansas grow up to so easily say things that make Republicans blush?

[A] Elders: Because our teachers taught sexuality in school, I never felt uncomfortable with it. Later, as an endocrinologist, I saw children with ambiguous genitalia and abnormalities of sexual differentiation. I saw little girls who went into puberty early--at three or four. The great risk was that they would be abused, so I had to talk to moms about protecting their daughters. With mom and dad sitting right there, we'd talk hard and heavy about it.

I also talked to young men. It got so that whenever they came in, they expected me to ask them to pull down their pants so I could see how they were developing. What upsets dad most is thinking his son is not developing into a young man. Dealing with these things for 20-plus years, you had to get comfortable with yourself so you could get comfortable with the parents.

[Q] Playboy: At this point, does anything about sex make Joycelyn Elders blush?

[A] Elders: There are probably lots of things that make me blush. I used to give lectures about sex to the high schoolers at my husband's school. Well, they knew more about sex than I did. [Laughs] They had a lot of misinformation, too.

[Q] Playboy: What misinformation do you think America has about AIDS?

[A] Elders: That "it doesn't affect me, my family, my neighborhood or my school." Well, it affects all of us. We're all vulnerable. It can touch each and every one of our families, any time.

[Q] Playboy: How do we fight that?

[A] Elders: Education, education, education. It's all we've got. It's amazing that we don't use all our available resources for that. We could use our churches, our schools, our communities. We could use the most powerful medium we have--television. But we don't.

[Q] Playboy: Since you brought up church: You're a 61-year-old, churchgoing woman. You've been happily married for 35 years, you've raised your family. How do you answer those people who say that you lack Christian family values?

[A] Elders: I say: Whose family values are they talking about? Family values, to me, is caring about others. Family values, to me, is having a supportive, extended, nuclear family. I don't feel that everybody's family has to be like my family. We can have single-parent families, we can have same-sex-parent families. Who are we to decide? God decides what real family values are.

[Q] Playboy: You talk about same-sex-parent families. In the past, you have blamed much of this country's antigay bigotry on what you've called an irrational fear of sexuality. Can you explain?

[A] Elders: I think our churches sometimes promote these irrational feelings and behaviors. Like the idea that gay or lesbian people cant take good care of children. Or that they'll like anybody of the same sex--that gay men will go after any man walking down the street. Well, those are lies. Their feelings are related to emotional bonding. I don't feel like going out with any man who walks down the street. Well, gay relationships are just like heterosexual relationships. Sometimes they may be even more warm and loving and caring than these so-called great families who talk about it.

[Q] Playboy: You said earlier if women were in control, there would be fewer fights about sexuality. Can you explain?

[A] Elders: Men are far more uptight about sex than women are--unless it involves them. Women are far more likely to be rational and open and to discuss things. Most rape, really, and child abuse is committed by men; most abnormal sexual behaviors involve men. Yet men are the ones who appear to be most bent out of shape about sex. Just take the abortion issue. Look who's always out there pontificating. But when you ask them about things we can do to make a difference, they spin out onto these crazy issues.

[Q] Playboy: Crazy issues?

[A] Elders: Let's say I was talking about comprehensive health education, grades K through 12. They're out there saying I'm teaching five-year-olds how to use condoms. Only a man with a warped sense of his own sexuality would even think that.

[Q] Playboy: Is there anything you know about abortion that you couldn't say as surgeon general?

[A] Elders: No. I said the things I wanted to say: Abortion should be safe and available and legal. We should hope to get to the point that it would be unnecessary; if we had planned, wanted pregnancies, abortion would be totally unnecessary. I've never known a woman to need an abortion who was not already pregnant. Also, people use the abortion issue.

[Q] Playboy: How?

[A] Elders: Many politicians run on just the abortion issue. The people fighting abortions are primarily men. They've never been pregnant, certainly not had an abortion. They go out and fight against abortion, but they don't think they need to fight for the health and welfare of children. That makes no sense to me. These people fight contraceptives. They're outside abortion clinics, fighting. But if the religious light were really serious, it would be out fighting for contraceptives, right? If these people really cared, they would be fighting for health education to prevent unplanned pregnancies. And to make sure that we had early childhood education and food stamps and all of that.

But they aren't.

You never see these people carrying signs supporting the health and welfare of children.

[Q] Playboy: What are you saying?

[A] Elders: That I don't see any of this love being demonstrated. That's why I call it a love affair with the fetus. See, a marriage, or a child--that's for a lifetime. But a fetus is a term-limited affair.

[Q] Playboy: So you don't think these people are sincere?

[A] Elders: No. I don't think they have as many feelings about the unborn as they say they do. You can't be that much in love with the fetus and not love children. There is no demonstration of their love for children, except with their own children. They're carrying banners to save a child who is unwanted, but they aren't willing to take that child into their home. They're fighting Medicaid and other things that support children.

[Q] Playboy: What is the greatest threat to reproductive freedom?

[A] Elders: For American women to allow men to take control of their uteruses. It's time for women to stand up.

[Q] Playboy: How?

[A] Elders: Any politicians who vote against abortion--well, vote them out. I mean, just line up and vote them out. They aren't good enough, they don't know enough and they don't love enough to make those kinds of decisions for women. We've let male physicians and celibate churches dictate our reproductive choices. It's time we make the decisions about those choices so we can have planned, wanted children. That's what America is about to me.

[Q] Playboy: You have said that politicians should stay out of women's uteruses. But in Arkansas, you also spearheaded efforts to increase men's accountability for the children they father, correct?

[A] Elders: To increase male responsibility, yes. We enacted some early laws to make men put their Social Security numbers on the birth certificates to make sure they pay for their children.

[Q] Playboy: So you believe the state should stay out of women's sexuality but regulate men's sexuality?

[A] Elders: If you have a child whom you both created, shouldn't you both be responsible? Why should it be just the woman's responsibility? Don't you feel that the man has a responsibility?

[Q] Playboy: You're comfortable compelling that responsibility through the state?

[A] Elders: Yes, I am. I feel if more men were responsible, then obviously far more contraceptives would be used.

[Q] Playboy: halfway through the second decade of AIDS, how would you grade America's response to the epidemic?

[A] Elders: Well, the only thing we've got against this disease is education--we do not have a drug or a vaccine. AIDS is making us talk about sex more than we might have. But we've not really educated our young people about that yet.

[Q] Playboy: Are you basically saying America's been asleep at the switch?

[A] Elders: We've been asleep at the switch as well as behind many European countries on sexuality and health education issues. They really started in the Seventies, when we were still feeling that ignorance was bliss.

[Q] Playboy: What do you see as the top public health concerns in the U.S.?

[A] Elders: AIDS and family planning are two things that we could help to solve if we just worked at them. We preach all these morals that our children know we don't follow. We try to legislate morals rather than teach responsibility. The European countries don't do that.

[Q] Playboy: We seem to have a Congress full of folks who think it's their job to legislate morals. Why is that?

[A] Elders: When people over the age of 60 or 65 start making decisions for the rest of us, they've forgotten that they've already done everything under the sun, and all of a sudden they're totally reformed. They tell us all these things we shouldn't do, and legislate all these things that shouldn't go on. Well, I feel we should have a mandatory retirement age of 65 for all political offices. Just like in schools, we need mandatory retirement for our elected officials. I don't feel we should allow anybody to be elected to a public office who's more than 65.

[Q] Playboy: Those are pretty strong words coming from a 61-year-old woman.

[A] Elders: That's right, absolutely.

[Q] Playboy: You don't see any value to accumulated wisdom?

[A] Elders: That depends on whether they accumulated wisdom or not. If they did, we could still use their wisdom. But they don't have to be in power to give it to us.

[Q] Playboy: The elderly are the fastest growing group in America. Don't they deserve politicians who represent them?

[A] Elders: If you've had the opportunity to make laws and decisions for the country until you're 65, then it's time to move over and let somebody else do that. We need some new blood, new thinking, new ideas.

[Q] Playboy: Where do you see this new thinking coming from?

[A] Elders: We have to admit: Newt Gingrich. We may not like his ideas, but at least he has put something out there. He's willing to stir things up and make people think. That's not bad--you can't be too mad about that. You still don't have to agree with him.

[Q] Playboy: Let's move closer to home. Your son, Kevin, was sentenced to ten years for selling an eighth of an ounce of cocaine. Would that have happened if his last name weren't Elders?

[A] Elders: Of course not. Nobody would have known that it had happened. He probably wouldn't even have been picked up. The person who was really turned in was never even locked up. I feel that my son was entrapped because of me. But if he hadn't been involved in drugs, it wouldn't have happened.

[Q] Playboy: This occurred shortly after your statement about legalizing drugs?

[A] Elders: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: That's a pretty hard thing for a mother to carry around.

[A] Elders: Well, because of that, my son got into treatment, and he's much better off now. If it had not happened, he might be dead today.

[Q] Playboy: So what would a rational drug policy look like?

[A] Elders: Our current drug policy doesn't appear to be working very well. We have too many young people being locked up and not getting treatment. We are not doing enough to prevent the problem in the first place. We're just filling up our prison cells and wasting our bright young people.

[Q] Playboy: So what are our options?

[A] Elders: If we're willing to put people in prison for drugs, we should at least provide treatment. We don't. Instead, we waste all our money making other people rich off the drug trade. The greatest growth industry in our country has been prisons: prison cells, the people building prisons, staffing prisons, lawyers. We're talking about money now, and money is power in our society. To me, those are real issues. We're not talking about how to help people.

[Q] Playboy: In the past you've called for legalizing marijuana.

[A] Elders: No, I never called for legalization. I called for studying the legalization of drugs--looking at what would make sense.

[Q] Playboy: Any specifics?

[A] Elders: I don't know enough. If I knew enough of what would make sense, I wouldn't be asking for a study, I'd be out there saying: "Now this is what we should do, you idiots." But I haven't studied that enough.

I know we certainly need to get counselors involved, even if we decriminalize drugs. When I say I would make drugs available for the drug users, I'm not talking about putting them on the shelf. The users would go to a hospital or a clinic, sign their name and pick up the drugs. This way we would get rid of all the sellers and dealers--and 60 percent of crime in the U.S. is, in some way, drug related. Then the counselors could get these people into treatment programs, reduce their doses and get them off the drugs. Most important, we could educate our young people in school about drugs, which we don't.

[Q] Playboy: OK, we've covered sex and drugs. Any thoughts on rock and roll?

[A] Elders: Well, some of our gangsta raps have just gone too far out.

[Q] Playboy: Any in particular?

[A] Elders: You know, calling women whores? It makes many young people totally disrespect women. It puts women down, portrays them as sex objects just to be used and abused.

[Q] Playboy: Yet rap is an indigenous voice coming from a disenfranchised community. Does that give it any legitimacy?

[A] Elders: I don't know. But I'm really concerned about what's happening to young black men. They're disappearing. They're either in jail or dead in the graveyards. They're on probation or into drugs or they're being killed by guns. Very few go to college. That, to me, is a real problem. If I knew what to do, I'd be out there trying to make it happen.

[Q] Playboy: You sound as if you think the young black male is endangered.

[A] Elders: Yes, I do. We have to start early. We've got to find mentors to keep them on track. Locking them up and throwing away the key or letting them revolve in and out of jail is not the way to go.

[Q] Playboy: What is the way to go?

[A] Elders: First, move them out of poverty. Second, educate them--start with early childhood education. Eighty-five percent of middle-income children have early childhood education. Yet only 18 percent of children on Medicaid--the poorest of the poor--have any early education. So they start behind, they stay behind and they never catch up. Then we complain because they don't do well. We're teaching our young black kids: "You're nobody, you're a second-class citizen, you can't make it. You're just going to get pregnant or kill somebody or be an addict." We've programmed these kids to be what we see.

I don't know any way you can get these kids out of poverty--and keep them out--without an education.

[Q] Playboy: That's a pretty sobering vision for the future of African Americans.

[A] Elders: Yes, we've got to do more. Our black churches have to do more. We were so busy--when I say we, I'm a part of that--surviving and trying to get up out of the barrel, so glad to have made it ourselves, that we weren't really that concerned about those we left behind.

[Q] Playboy: If you were to distill these issues into a list like the Contract With America, what would a prescription for a healthier country include?

[A] Elders: That we provide universal health care for all Americans.

That we make a heavy investment in children.

That we do whatever is needed to make sure that every child born in America is a planned and wanted child.

That we have early childhood education for all children, and health education programs in our schools.

That our young men begin to feel male responsibility.

That we provide primary preventive health services in schools.

And that all bright young people who want to go to college--who are decent human beings and have a B or above average--should have that opportunity.

[Q] Playboy: As you look back over the past two years, how do you feel you were treated by the press?

[A] Elders: The good press--the best, most respectable press--was really very fair to me. And the people who wanted to get things wrong and twist things and distort things did.

[Q] Playboy: What was the biggest example of twisting things?

[A] Elders: When I supposedly said I wanted to legalize drugs. Thank God for videotape. What if it hadn't been on video? Then I never could have proved what I said.

[Q] Playboy: Was that calculated, or just sloppiness by the press?

[A] Elders: It was very calculated in some parts of the press. When I made the comment on masturbation, all the media were there at the UN. All the major TV stations. We even had a press conference afterward. But not one blip about it. It was only when people decided to distort it that it got to be such big news.

[Q] Playboy: Do you believe that what happened to you was part of a plan?

[A] Elders: Right. If you read all of their literature, you'll see that the religious non-Christian right has a very orchestrated plan. They plan to be in 60,000 churches on the Tuesday before the next election, handing out information on who to vote for. It's powerful. They were out there at the midterm elections.

[Q] Playboy: Does America realize that?

[A] Elders: No. I didn't realize it until about a year or two ago. Then I started seeing their literature, seeing their organization, and knowing they were holding all these meetings on how to win school board elections and that sort of thing.

What's scary about all this is that they're doing it; it's getting done. They said: "We'll start where there's low voter turnout and take over the school boards. We will send our children to private Christian schools. We will control what the children are taught, and we will fight against public schools and destroy them, and we'll take away all their power"--because if you keep people poor and ignorant, they have no power. And they're doing all that very effectively, all across this country. I thought it was just happening in Arkansas, but that's not true. We are putting our heads in the sand, ignoring the problem, pretending it doesn't exist and hoping that it will go away. We've allowed political satire to become our reality. I hope the American people begin to wise up.

[Q] Playboy: And if we don't?

[A] Elders: Sooner or later, a nation that does not take care of its youngest, eldest and weakest will truly self-destruct. We are always working in this country to prevent things from happening to us from the outside. But I don't think we have to worry about anything happening to the U.S. from the outside. We're going to self-destruct from the inside. Look at Russia. Nobody dropped a bomb on Russia. But it would have been better off, probably, if somebody had. What I mean by that is that the Russian people are suffering from the inside by self-destruction. I feel that if a country allows this to happen, its citizens are saying that this is what they really want.

[Q] Playboy: Is that what America wants?

[A] Elders: Well, it's not what the people I'm out there seeing and meeting on the street want. It bothers me that we're sitting back and allowing this group to take over. Yet it is happening and I'm not even sure that people are noticing.

[Q] Playboy: Any advice?

[A] Elders: It's time that we wake up and decide if we want to keep control and keep America inclusive--with room for all of us, the kind of country that we want it to be, the land of the free and home of the brave. Or do we want to turn it over to these self-righteous, self-appointed people who have so little room for anybody different? They go out and get the whole world to fight, and we're sitting here swallowing it, not saying anything.

[Q] Playboy: Any parting words for them?

[A] Elders: [Laughs] Yes. I would suggest that they really pray for themselves. And make sure that they don't try to sit in God's place.

Face it: If I had been saying everything they wanted to hear, nobody would know who the surgeon general was.