As I turn on the TV, just before the 11 o'clock news, I see something that, frankly, astonishes me.
On prime-time TV, in a land we call America, I see actor Dennis Franz's naked behind. This is not something, by the way, I particularly wish to see so close to bedtime. In fact, I don't want to see it near lunch either.
And yet, from what I'm told, Franz's derriere is a prime-time staple on the highly regarded "NYPD Blue."
On this particular night, Franz is joined in the shower by a woman, whose backside, at least to this eye, is more viewer friendly. In any case, with water falling over the two bodies, one as naked as the other, the woman begins to scrub Franz in a way you never saw on, say, "Make Room for Daddy."
Now, I want you to hold this thought as we segue to Joycelyn Elders, who was until recently the surgeon general, before they stripped her of her epaulets because she dared utter the M-word.
To me, you can't take anybody seriously who dresses up in that silly surgeon general's uniform, which looks like a cross between the Salvation Army and an Eagle Scout. And I ask you, why is the nation's head doctor a general when the head of the defense department is a secretary?
Nevertheless, people did take Elders seriously, so seriously that eventually they got her fired.
Elders' problem was she thought -- in a society where too much sexual activity among teens is a national health crisis -- her job included talking honestly about sex, even the kind you have alone. She thought information was a good thing. It was children having children she thought was a bad thing.
In summation, Franz wins an Emmy and makes millions for being naked on TV; Elders gets fired because she advocates talking to youngsters about things like condoms and masturbation.
We've learned an important lesson here, boys and girls.
You can watch sex on TV.
You can rent hard-core sex at the video store. In fact, a certain Supreme Court justice is famous for it.
You can see sex simulated on music videos.
You can see famous people (Patti Davis and Sly Stallone are recent examples) naked on magazine covers.
You can do everything, in fact, but talk about sex. It's the talking part that gets us squeamish. That's when the old puritan ethic suddenly kicks in.
As Hester Prynne might have pointed out, we're clearly a nation obsessed with the topic. Polls on sex can become front-page news for days. Millions of magazines are sold as informational guides as to who's doing what with whom. There's even a Merchant-Ivory movie coming out about Thomas Jefferson's supposedly kinky love life. What's next -- George Washington had a fling with Betsy Ross?
Of course, it isn't exactly true that you can't talk about it. There's always phone sex. You can talk to "Lulu." You just can't talk about it in public.
Because, if you do, then maybe some young innocent, who had never seen MTV or "Baywatch" or any made-for-TV movie starring either Victoria Principal or Jaclyn Smith, would suddenly decide to jump into bed with the next person he/she saw.
This is also the argument many use against sex education in the schools -- that teaching sex promotes sex. I'm not sure the argument works.
For example, schools teach kids French, and I don't see the malls jammed with French-speaking teens.
Schools teach them physics. You see any illicit physics going on?
In fact, the stuff that schools try hardest to impart -- like reading and adding -- apparently hasn't taken hold with a great number of our young people.
The truth about sex is that it's everywhere anyone looks. And anybody who thinks that teens are not entirely familiar with the M-word -- once described by Woody Allen as sex with someone you love -- should consider a 60,000-mile reality check.
Maybe you've forgotten about how you learned about sex, about how your parents couldn't quite bring themselves to explain it and just handed you a book. It was a book you passed around with your friends, having underlined the dirty parts, in case anyone missed them.
If you look at the statistics on teen-age pregnancy, it's clear we're not doing much of a job teaching about sex.
Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I'd prefer to see young people talking about it than actually doing it.