Today is May 19. It’s not a holiday (that I know of) or any other special day, but on this date in 1992 a significant speech was made that signals just how far our society has come since that time.
From 1988-1998, Murphy Brown was a successful sit-com on CBS. It featured Candice Bergen and chronicled her story as an investigative reporter and news anchor. In the 1991-1992 season, the show decided to take a chance by disrupting the idea of the traditional American family. The story line focused on Brown becoming pregnant, but deciding not to marry the father. Instead, she chose to have the child out of wedlock. In addition, the show decided to remove the influence of the father from the story line, leaving only Murphy Brown to raise the child.
You might be thinking, “So what? Big deal! That happens everyday! I can see that on TV all the time.” Yes, it does happen everyday and you can see that on TV all the time, but in 1992, the idea of a woman having a child out of wedlock was foreign and looked down upon.
On May 19, 1992, former Vice President Dan Quayle made his famous speech regarding the story line of the TV show. Quayle criticized the show for ignoring the importance of the father in the home and birthing a child alone. This speech sparked a major discussion in American about traditional family values. In 2002, Candice Bergen even admitted to the Associated Press that she agreed with much of Quayle’s speech. She called it “a perfectly intelligent speech about fathers not being dispensable” and added that “nobody agreed with that more than I did.”
The main focus of this issue is not necessarily about the story line for the show or Quayle’s speech. Rather, it is a deep look into what our society and our media has become. In 1992 it was taboo for TV show to portray a single mother having a baby. Today, we don’t even think about that. While it is the norm, and TV often reflects the norm of society, that doesn’t mean the norm is positive.
We know our traditional values are slipping away. We know the media is taking these values and hurling them into a nosedive, hoping to leave little more than traces of truth in the ashes.
How far have we come, and how far are we going?
Tags: CBS, Dan Quayle, May 19, Murphy Brown, single mothers, TV, wedlock
May 19th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
How far have we come is easy to answer. Now we see TV shows that display that as well as any other conceivable combination of parents in a home. With reality TV, there’s no limit and no shock value any more. The hard question to answer is how far are we going? I think that answer is in the hands of each of us. When the majority of Americans polled still claim some form of evangelical/protestant/or non-denominational Christianity, we have the ability to ignore these shows and put them out of business. But in the name of keeping relevance we do not ignore them. This is a behavior that Christians need to change in themselves, while it still can make a difference.
May 20th, 2009 at 8:44 am
Unfortunately, in our upside down society entertainment no longer reflects reality as much as reality reflects entertainment. Television, movies, and music often portray the worst of our society until society starts to accept it as normal. In order to still be shocking, entertainment is forced to show even more drastic material. How far are we going? The cycle seems endless.