Dan Quayle vs. Murphy Brown replay - Not!

Dan Quayle's vice presidential portrait	Candice Bergen as 'Murphy Brown'

George W. Bush's father's Vice President, Dan Quayle, ignited a firestorm during the 1992 presidential campaign when, in an unscripted aside to a prepared speech, he decried the fictional TV character 'Murphy Brown' for having a child out of wedlock. The incident comes to mind in light of the Palin brouhaha.

Time magazine cited Quayle's aside thus --

"It doesn't help matters," Quayle complained, when Brown, "a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid professional woman" is portrayed as "mocking the importance of fathers, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another 'life-style choice.' "

The remark was replayed endlessly. 'Murphy Brown' plowed on, and got its revenge in the opening of the 1993 season ('You say potatoe, I say potato' -- poking fun at the VP's famous spelling gaffe), when Brown arranges for a truckload of potatoes to be dumped in front of Quayle's home.

When Candice Bergen won an Emmy for her portrayal of 'Murphy Brown' that year, she thanked Quayle in her acceptance speech.

Lost in all the hubbub was the fact that Quayle was decrying the character's choice not to wed the father, and the notion that a role for the father was thus 'dispensable'.

Bergen, though no fan of the Veep (she said in a NYTimes OpEd that Quayle 'seemed to be doing a fine job of [heaping ridicule and scorn on the office of Vice President] all by himself' -- see here), later said no one could be more in agreement on the importance of fatherhood than she.

Since Barack Obama, mentioning that his own mother was just 18 when he was born, has put the subject of Palin's daughter's marital status off-limits, the Democratic campaign will not take up the Quayle cudgel.

It may not have to.

In 2000, W's campaign allegedly masterminded a smear campaign against presidential candidate John McCain, whispering that he had fathered a Black baby out-of-wedlock.

This year, we have YouTube and the Huffington Post and Google and email blasts, all powerful tools for spreading the word -- and not susceptible of control by either the Obama or McCain campaigns.

The pols may be right that 'kids are off limits', but you can be sure that the POLICY QUESTIONS behind the story -- sex education in the schools, 'abstinence' as a public policy, making US foreign aid contingent on abstinency education, AIDS/HIV policies, and more -- will be thrashed out, whether or not the pols want.

Candice Bergen won an Emmy for her work
in 'Murphy Brown', which ran from 1988 to 1998.

Too bad Avery, Murphy Brown's baby boy, is only 16 this year.

He will have to wait until 2012 to cast HIS vote.

---

Time, 6/1/1992: "Dan Quayle versus Murphy Brown"
VP Dan Quayle: "Address to the Commonwealth Club, May 19, 1992"
TV Museum: "Murphy Brown: Situation Comedy, 1988-98"
Wikipedia: Dan Quayle | Murphy Brown |
2000 Campaign: "Anatomy of a smear campaign" -- McCain was smeared in 2000 race by Bush campaign as fathering a Black child out of wedlock.

-- Dan Damon

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