Abstract

Marriage entered presidential politics for the first time as farce: Dan Quayle's June 1992 attack on the television character "Murphy Brown" for having a child while unmarried. In the wake of the Los Angeles riots, the then-vice president addressed the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. "The lawless social anarchy which we saw," he argued, "is directly related to the breakdown of family structure." The poverty at the root of the disorders was a "poverty of morals." At the very end of speech, he denounced "Murphy Brown" and her Hollywood creators for "mocking fatherhood," glamorizing single motherhood, and thereby encouraging family disintegration among the poor. The attack on a popular television show launched a media frenzy and a torrent of late night talk-show jokes.

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