The Revenge of Murphy Brown

The Revenge of Murphy Brown

In an otherwise routine speech in May, 1992, Vice-President Dan Quayle criticized Murphy Brown, the TV character played by Candice Bergen, for bearing an out-of-wedlock child, emphasizing that it “ignored the importance of fathers.” He was subsequently skewered by the elitists of the cultural left. How, they asked, could he make such a big deal about a fictional character? The culture warriors insisted that there was nothing wrong with a woman having a child that she would raise alone. Of course, the left always believed that Quayle was an idiot, so they abruptly dismissed his comments as idiotic. That lack of...