Reposted here without comment from http://www.claremont.org/writings/crb/winter2003/moore.html.
WIMPS and BARBARIANS
The Sons of Murphy Brown
By Terrence O. Moore
Posted January 8, 2004
More than a decade ago the nation was in a stir over the birth of a fictional boy. The boy was Avery, son of Murphy Brown. Television’s Murphy Brown, played by Candice Bergen, was a successful news commentator who, after an unsuccessful relationship with a man that left her alone and pregnant, bore a son out of wedlock. The event, popular enough in its own right, became the center of political controversy when then Vice President Dan Quayle in a speech to the Commonwealth Club of California lamented that the show was “mocking the importance of a father.” Suddenly the nation polarized over this question of “family values.” But the controversy over Murphy Brown’s childbearing soon died down. The characters on the show became more interested in Murphy’s hairstyle than her baby, as did perhaps Murphy, who eventually found a suitable nanny in her painter so she could pursue her career without abatement. The show was off the air before Murphy’s son would have been seven. Vice President Quayle was not reelected. Eleven years later, it is worth pondering what might have happened to Avery had this story not been just a television show. More to the point, what is happening today to our boys and young men who come from “families” not unlike Murphy’s and who find the nation as divided now as it was then over the “values” by which we ought to raise them?
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