Talk:Joycelyn Elders

Cite video
I've replaced the use of cite video in this article for the time being because our template is hopelessly outdated and not up to our current sourcing standards, requiring a whole lot of data to be crammed artificially into the "title" parameter. Given the increase in copyright holders like Showtime posting legal videos on websites, we're going to need to bring over the more robust versions of these templates. But with that robustness comes (as seems to be the case with so many current templates) a mass of Wikipedia-specific complexity, so it may take a little while to whittle them down to be usable on Wikiquote. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 22:29, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

AIDS, cancer, Social security quote
I've removed a quote in which Elders is apparently making a point about AIDS endangering the young and therefore our entire society, but ends up with a line that sounds utterly selfish. Here is a version I found on a Rush Limbaugh "unofficial transcription" site that provides some of the context for the part originally quoted. (I'm not bothering to cite the source because it isn't reliable; this is just a starting point for research.)


 * We know that AIDS is a ravaged disease in our country that's destroying our bright young people. We've not found the cure for this disease. We do not have a vaccine for this disease. The only thing we've got is education and to try and treat them as best we can. I feel that if we do not find a vaccine, do not find a new drug, and we do not educate our bright, young people, Senator, we're going to lose our entire society. You know, most of the people that die with heart disease and cancer are our elderly population, you know, and we all will probably die with something sooner or later. And we've been investing, certainly in cancer and in heart disease, and I feel that we should continue, I'm not downplaying that. But I'm saying that we are losing the people that's going to pay my Social Security and that bothers me.

I removed it because the only sources I could find for this quote are attack sites, nearly all of which quote only the last few lines in the course of vilifying Elders. (That alone is sufficient to remove an unsourced quote under Quotes of living persons. However, since Rush Limbaugh's show apparently used a video clip to provide this entire quote, and since at least one other source suggested that it was recorded by a reporter, I thought I would present the entire quote here for others to research. After all, Elders is known for her bold and politically outrageous talk, so I find this entire quote (warts and all) at least plausible. But I'm troubled by the failure of anyone to cite a specific source or even place or date of the event. The "Senator" part implies it's Congressional testimony, yet I found no instance of this salacious quote (or even the more palatable parts) in any official transcript. Anyway, I'll leave it as an exercise for our readers. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 02:07, 5 September 2007 (UTC)