In case you missed it last night, Stephen Colbert's "The Word" segment dealt with Gov. Rick Perry's issuing an executive order on February 2 directing the Health and Human Services Commission to adopt rules requiring all 11- and 12-year-old girls to receive the human papillomavirus vaccine prior to entering sixth grade, effective September 2008. You remember -- the order that got Rick Perry, the man who thinks all us heathens are doomed, branded a traitor by the Religious Right who thought he could do no wrong? Yeah, that one.
Colbert, referring to Texas as "that liberal enclave," first quotes Rick Scarborough of Vision America, which wants to "restore the original American vision"; wow, that's friendly. Scarborough, a friend of Perry's, said this week that "the Governor's action seems to signify that God's moral law regarding sex outside of marriage can be transgressed without consequence." To which Colbert responded: "The message here is clear: If you have sex, God will give you cancer." --Robert Wilonsky