Back in the early 1990s, in an episode that was very much a precursor for the future, then-Vice President Dan Quayle got into a feud with a fictional character, Murphy Brown.
Brown, played by Candice Bergen, was a network news journalist on the CBS TV series of the same name from 1988 to 1998. In 1992, the series did a storyline in which the Murphy character, who was unmarried, became pregnant and chose to raise her child as a single mother. That May, amidst the presidential campaign, Vice President Quayle gave a speech in which he ripped the character for “mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone.”
This was a significant controversy throughout that summer, and when the series returned in the fall, it incorporated the vice president’s comments into the show:
“Family values” were a big issue in that presidential election, in which President George H.W. Bush and his running mate, Dan Quayle, lost the election to Bill Clinton and Al Gore that November.
In the Trump era, politicans feuding with celebrities has become a far-from rare occurrence. And when Murphy Brown returned for a brief reboot during Trump’s presidency, it pulled a similar storyline, with Murphy arguing with a videotape of Donald Trump.
On Sunday, at the Emmy Awards, Candice Bergen once again squared off against a Republican politician, this time the man who’s running for Dan Quayle’s old job, J.D. Vance.
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