Tuesday, Jasper, Indiana

Veteran actress Candace Bergen is now best remembered for playing the character Murphy Brown for a decade (1988-1998). She broke new ground as a female character by playing a recovering alcoholic who returns from rehab to resume her role as an investigative reporter for television news magazine show.

Murphy was tough, relentlessly sarcastic and of course, hilarious. The writing on the show was crisp and often brilliant. And, as is always the case and a successful sitcom, the cast was loaded with colorful, if stereotyped characters. There was the rigid news anchor Jim, the airhead Corky and the youthful producer Miles, the foil for Murphy’s acid tongue.

Murphy Brown aired a decade after the legendary Mary Tyler Moore Show. But it took a character of a woman news reporter to new heights, or perhaps depths. Murphy Brown was Mary Richards with roid rage! Murphy was the cynic to Mary’s optimism; the bile to the sweetness of Mary Richards. And in some ways Murphy Brown reflected the time and sensibility of America in the late 1980s. This was the era dubbed “the need generation.” So much of what was going on in the popular culture seem to affirm that it was right for each of us to grab everything we could for ourselves.

The 1980’s was the decade when Oliver Stone’s film Wall Street critiqued the emptiness of our narcissism. And in reflecting the consequences of this time of selfishness, Murphy Brown played the lost, burnout perfectly. Murphy said out loud what millions of women were thinking, but not all of them were willing to express. She flamed out at stupidity, particularly inept men who deserved her wrath and the contempt of any thinking person.

The show might have been relegated to a warm memory in television history if it weren’t for Vice President Dan Quayle. In 1992 speech, Quayle decided to reference the show Murphy Brown by criticizing its depiction of a woman who has a baby out of wedlock, and plans to raise it alone, as if a father was unnecessary. Quayle’s speech ignited a firestorm that roused the anger of conservatives and created a backlash against the permissive liberalism of Hollywood. And this backlash listed all throughout the 90s, capped by the resurgence of the takeover of Congress by conservative Republicans.

It’s not that Murphy Brown was responsible for this backlash, but the show became a touchstone for an abiding frustration by millions of Americans who rejected the values depicted in much of popular culture. It is interesting to note that Candace Bergen herself was quoted as saying she agreed with Quayle, that it is important to not marginalize the role of the father and raising children. Nonetheless, Quayle was the target of endless ridicule for choosing a fictional character to make a point about the American family. And so the unlikely couple of Dan Quayle and Murphy Brown are forever connected and pop-culture history.