Teen pregnancy rates in the United States are up for the first time in years. The New York Times attributed this sad finding to a study by the Guttmacher Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit research group:

While teenage pregnancy rates for whites remain far lower than for blacks and Hispanics, the pregnancy rates increased for all three groups.

As previously reported, births to young women ages 15 to 19 — a statistic that is available more quickly than pregnancy and abortion data — rose from 2005 to 2006, and again from 2006 to 2007.

Since the teenage pregnancy rate is made up of births, abortions and miscarriages, it is likely that the teenage pregnancy rate rose from 2006 to 2007, as well.

The Guttmacher Institute blames abstinence-only programs for this scary trend. Teens are less likely to use contraception now that over a billion dollars has been spent on telling them not to have sex. Teen abortions are up by one percent.

On Tuesday’s The View, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, missing the point, proclaimed that we can reverse the pregnancy rate by telling girls to say no. Once a girl has had sex, she said, the girl perceives herself as “a girl who has sex,” but she should know that she still has the right to say no.

But, Elisabeth and other promoters of the GIRLS MUST SAY NO solution to teen pregnancy don’t take into account that girls, like boys, are highly sexual beings. It’s hard enough for a girl to deny her own inclinations, yet we expect her to do that and take responsibility for her boyfriend’s, as well.

So, here’s an idea: Why don’t we teach our sons to say no? Teach them from a very early age that sex is special and meant to be shared with only another very special person? In other words, what would happen if we raised our sons to “respect themselves” and “not give their bodies away,” the way we raise our daughters?

What if we raise our daughters to view boys who sleep around as “cheap” and “not the kind of fellow you bring home to mother,” instead of playboys, playas, and ladies’ men?

Girls are subject to the same temptations as boys. Sex is not a boy’s thing that a girl gives into because she wants to be loved, or because she suffers from low-self-esteem. Sometimes she needs someone to stop her before things get out of hand. Let’s lose the ‘boys will be boys’ mentality and help a girl out.

Last season, Desperate Housewives, bugged me.

First, there was that wacky voiceover from dead Wisteria Lane resident, Mary Alice Young, admonishing viewers that polite people are wolves in sheep’s clothing, while rude people have our best interests at heart.

Which irked me. I mean, what are you teaching my kids? (And, no, I’m not going to forbid my adolescent children from seeing shows they’re just going to hear about from their friends, anyway. If I allow them to join me in watching Desperate Housewives and other media that promote messages I deem inappropriate, i.e., Fergie videos, I can counter with some messages of my own.)

I mean, the occasional smooth-talking slime notwithstanding, most people are polite precisely because they care about other people. They make a special effort because they do have their best interests at heart. On the other hand, rude people don’t care much about other people’s feelings at all.

Desperate Housewives’ storylines last season disappointed me, as well. Dana Delany’s character, Catherine, fought tooth and nail to get Mike, Teri Hatcher’s character’s castoff, to marry her, even though Catherine isn’t sure if he even loves her. She wheedled and connived, eventually wrenching the proposal from the guy like a sore tooth.

You’d think the woman would be happier on her own.

But the message of Desperate Housewives sounds loud and clear: “Women are better off with a man and should do whatever it takes to get one.” Hey, to be fair, maybe writers don’t intend to impart that message. Maybe it just makes for good drama.

But fresher, smarter, more original ways to create good drama surely exist.

My daughters, who are 14 and 13, complain that Desperate Housewives has become “stupid” and “boring.” The nonsense of Marcia Cross’s Bree emasculating her husband, Orson, with her success is lost on them: Don’t husbands like it when the women they love achieve their dreams?

Next season doesn’t look to shape up any better. As Teri Hatcher told the women of The View this morning, her character’s ex, Mike, will marry “Catherine or Susan, not Gabby or Bree or some other whore.”

Referring again to the rivals for Mike’s affection, she said, “One of the characters gets married, and one of them has a nervous breakdown.”

Sounds like another season of entertainment at its finest.

In case you haven’t already heard, former presidential candidate John McCain’s daughter, Meghan, a writer for The Daily Beast, suggested that an extremist like Ann Coulter isn’t doing the Republican party any favors.

Conservative pundit Laura Ingraham rose to Coulter’s defense by doing an ugly Valley Girl imitation of McCain (which made Ingraham sound more of a fool than her intended target) and referred to her as a ‘plus-sized’ model. We all have the right to disagree, but it really is disheartening when one woman calls another out on her weight. Surely we can do better than this. Meghan later appeared on The View and struck back.

For another perspective on this story, check out Crooks and Liars.

Friends and I headed to Manhattan Tuesday to watch a live broadcast of my guilty pleasure, The View.

In a segment featuring singer Tom Jones, host Barbara Walters asked if he’d been “exemplary” in his 52-year marriage. Tom looked uncomfortable, so Joy piped in that he had been “on the road” and suggested — in that brash way of hers — that Tom’s wife might not have been exemplary, either.

I dream on a daily basis of being as funny, bold, and quick on my feet as Joy Behar.

Last week, Joy sat in for Larry King and interviewed Ann Coulter. I happened to be on a cruise ship with limited and strange TV programming (Get Smart and Magnum P.I. reruns, along with frequent news bulletins about the tragedy of the chimpanzee who gravely assaulted a Connecticut woman) and missed it.

Here it is, in case you missed it, too.