Depending on the day, I think Gail Collins’ opinion columns are either a step above or a step below Maureen Dowd’s level of vapidity. For some reason Collins made the decision that rather than writing serious columns befitting her former role as an editorial writer, she thinks trying to out-Dowd Maureen is a worthy use of her column inches. As a result, I almost never read Collins’ columns and consider them a waste of space. Why should I spend 5 minutes reading Collins or Dowd when I could read Christy Hardin Smith or Digby and actually learn something valuable.

With that in mind, I will say that a column on Bristol Palin’s re-emergence as a main advocate for abstinence sex education piqued my interest and I actually clicked through to read Collins’ column. Buried within a predictable column are these lines, which had me laughing out loud at their poignant accuracy and humor:

“It’s not going to work,” said her ex-boyfriend, Levi Johnston, in a dueling early-morning interview.

If you have ever watched Levi Johnston on TV for two minutes you will appreciate how terrifying it is when he has the most reasonable analysis of a social issue.

Yep, that’s about right. And a solid reminder that someone who got pregnant while in high school because she and her boyfriend didn’t practice safe sex and use condoms is not exactly a role model for abstinence-only education. In fact, Palin is an example of what is so dangerous about abstinence-only sex education. Maybe doing this work will keep Bristol Palin in her the media spotlight and let her mother point to her charitable work for a Christian cause, but it will likely result in the prolonging of abstinence-only education as a respected alternative to comprehensive sex education, thus leading to more unwanted teen pregnancies.