Editing Dan Quayle (section)

=== ''Murphy Brown'' ===

On May 19, 1992, Quayle gave a speech titled ''[[s:Reflections on Urban America|Reflections on Urban America]]'' to the [[Commonwealth Club of California]] on the subject of the [[1992 Los Angeles riots|Los Angeles riots]].<ref name="nytimes.com">{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/26/arts/television/murphy-brown-dan-quayle.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220103/https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/26/arts/television/murphy-brown-dan-quayle.html |archive-date=2022-01-03 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live|title=That Time 'Murphy Brown' and Dan Quayle Topped the Front Page|work=The New York Times|date=January 26, 2018|last1=Fortin|first1=Jacey}}{{cbignore}}</ref> In the speech he blamed the violence on a decay of moral values and family structure in American society.<ref name="nytimes.com"/> In an aside, he cited the single mother title character in the television program ''[[Murphy Brown]]'' as an example of how popular culture contributes to this "poverty of values", saying, "It doesn't help matters when [[prime time|prime-time]] TV has Murphy Brown—a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid, professional woman—mocking the importance of fathers, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another 'lifestyle choice'."<ref>{{cite magazine | url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,975627,00.html | title=Dan Quayle vs. Murphy Brown | magazine=Time | date=June 1, 1992 | access-date=June 24, 2010 | archive-date=August 25, 2013 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130825193119/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,975627,00.html | url-status=dead }}</ref>

The "[[Murphy Brown#Murphy becomes a single mother|Murphy Brown speech]]" became one of the most memorable of the 1992 campaign. Long after the outcry had ended, the comment continued to have an effect on U.S. politics. [[Stephanie Coontz]], a professor of family history and the author of several books and essays about the history of [[marriage]], said that this brief remark by Quayle about Murphy Brown "kicked off more than a decade of outcries against the 'collapse of the family{{'"}}.<ref>{{cite news | url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/30/AR2005043000108.html | newspaper=The Washington Post | title=For Better, For Worse | first=Stephanie | last=Coontz | author-link=Stephanie Coontz | date=May 1, 2005 | access-date=April 30, 2010 | archive-date=November 7, 2012 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121107133949/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/04/30/AR2005043000108.html | url-status=live }}</ref> In 2002, [[Candice Bergen]], the actress who played Brown, said "I never have really said much about the whole episode, which was endless, but his speech was a perfectly intelligent speech about fathers not being dispensable and nobody agreed with that more than I did." Others interpreted it differently; singer [[Tanya Tucker]] was widely quoted as saying "Who the hell is Dan Quayle to come after single mothers?"<ref>{{cite news |agency=Associated Press |title=Candice Bergen agrees with Quayle |url=http://archives.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/News/07/11/showbuzz/index.html |publisher=CNN |date=July 11, 2002 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20080328133715/http://archives.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/News/07/11/showbuzz/index.html#1|archive-date=March 28, 2008}}</ref>