Opinion
Ouavle makes sense
America’s moral values need a good look
Vice President Dan Quayle has continued his assault on
‘‘Mutphy Brown” and declining traditional moral values
of the United States, but is anyone listening.
Although the debate is focused on a fictitious sitcom mother
who bore a child out of wedlock, Quayle is addressing a very
real issue.
In a Tuesday speech to the Southern Baptist Convention in
Indiana, Quayle said that the decaying traditional family
was the root of America’s problems.
“The cultural elites respect neither tradition or standards,” he
said. “They believe that moral truths are relative and all ‘life
styles’ are equal. They seem to think the family is an arbitrary
arrangement of people who decide to live under the same roof,
that fathers are dispensable and that parents need not be
married or even of opposite sexes. They are wrong.”
They are wrong.
Many families today are not what they should be.
Husbands should honor and love their wives and wives
should love and respect their husbands.
Parents are responsible to be an example to their children
and to train them in up in the way they should go so that when
they are old, they will not depart from it. -
Children, in turn, are supposed to obey and honor their
father and mother and in return receive the reward of long life.
These maxims also can be taken outside the home.
If traditional values like doing unto others as you would
have done to you were still predominant, this country wouldn’t
be tom by cultural disputes, domestic violence and drug abuse.
If people loved their neighbors, people wouldn’t be killed
for the color of their skin or their nation of origin, the homeless
would be cared for and crime in general would be on the
decline.
We Americans like to be told how good we are, how we’re
the most advanced, civilized, moral nation on the planet.
Quayle’s charges against our society and its cultural elites
aren’t pleasant to hear, but that doesn’t make his point less
valid.
However ridiculous Quayle makes his concerns look by
picking on someone who doesn’t even exist, this is a serious
issue. But while editorial columns and cartoons take pot shots
at his methods, the moral decay of our society remains to be
addressed.
Quayle said that to appeal to our country’s enduring basic
moral values is to invite scorn and laughter.
OK, laugh and scorn. ..
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1
Quayle uses sitcom for election
Dan Quayle has finally tackled
something that he can handle:
a television sitcom, “Murphy
Brown.” A couple of weeks ago, our
vice-president attacked, without
mercy, the show’s title character, an
urbane, intelligent professional
woman, for having a baby out of
wedlock and key. It seems he was
more outraged at the immoral actions
of a fictional character than some of
the real ills out here in America, the
ernes not staged on television.
If we can only imagine him or his
handlers to have the crafty intelli
gence of Richard Nixon, Quayle was
cynically using Murphy Brown as a
cheap but effective vehicle to carry
the Bush/Quayle“family value” con
cerns that they hope will endear them
to the average American voter. The
savvy politician knows that the media
can almost be counted on to latch onto
simple, snappy issues like this.
Probably predicted by Quayle’s
handlers, Murphy Brown’s introduc
tion into the campaign brought talk of
the previously ignored touting of fam
ily values to the forefront of our
nation’s media. It was the issue of the
week, not quite a Long Dong Silver,
but probably close approaching the
interest of, say, the “Air” Sununu
revelations. Newsweek’s June 8 issue
featured Bush and Quayle’s push for
family values as its cover story,
“Whose values?”
Unfortunately for Quayle, he had
to retreat a bit, even from the fictional
scenario of Murphy Brown. For at
least single mother Murphy Brown,
more than one thinking person rea
soned, made the right “choice” and
decided to have the baby and not an
abortion. Catching himself in this
pol itical quicksand m usl not have been
anticipated by our intrepid vccpec.
Quayle had to waffle on his thereto
fore solid anti-Murphy-baby stand, in
order to stay clear and consistent on
his anti-abortion stand. This political
godfather did not want Murphy to
nave the baby or have an abortion.
What to do? How to wiggle?
Murphy Brown’s show is, to tell by
the few times I’ve seen it - which is, by
the way, a few more times than Quayle
has seen it, reportedly never a quality
show intended not for kids, but a more
adult audience. There is snappy hu
mor by way of witty repartee between
the adult characters which make the
show enjoyable to watch, more so for
an adult, it would seem, than an im
pressionable 12 year old. So it would
seem that role modeling is not so
much a factor here than in, say,“Full
House,” which is surely geared to
ward kids with its cute kiddy cast and
sugary-sweet dialogue, which is al
most sure to cause tooth decay and/or
brain rot.
Yes, I would agree with Quayle
that the two parent (one mommy, one
daddy) family is the ideal and desir
able provided both are reasonable,
caring people who are willing and
able to take on the awesome life task
of raising children. But, then again, so
is it the ideal to have an intellectually
astute, not challenged, vice president.
And yet we seem to surv i ve and some
times thrive, even when we exist in an
environment short of the ascribed ide
als. I have survived, albeit not per
fectly, growing up with only one par
ent, due to my father’s death when I
was seven years old. And so the coun
try will survive with the fictional over
lay of Murphy Brown as a single
mother; and so also, probably, will
America survive the vacuous mind of
the vice president. Keep well, Mr.
President.
Now that Quay Ic/Bush have seized
the stage on family values, will they
do anything about it besides talking?
Sad to say, we as the American public
are part of the blame. We passively
take in political posturing as it im
merses us with the stultifying effects
of formaldehyde. Aren’t we in a pickle
or, more precisely, pickled by not
making our politicians accountable to
their election campaign maneuvers/
promises/pleas? The politicians have
us where they want ils, stewing about
insignificant issues like Murphy
Brown’s propriety, while they tackle
the more important business, like
what,... I don’t know, because I’m
in a pickle. Witness Bush, the Read
My Lips/ Environmental/ Education/
Jobs, Jobs, Jobs president When he
Finishes standing up with a pretty
label, it seems he would just want to
wish away all the attendant responsi
bility of living up to the self-affixed
label.
Part of the real solution to the
American Family, if I may be so bold
as to not want to be elected President,
is to plain turn off that damn televi
sion every once in a while, and ac
S relate to one another within the
y. Go with what you have and
build on it. Don’t worry about what
the administration has to say about
values, what with all their sometimes
crafty, sometimes dubious, not al
ways moral policy decisions. One must
lake note that Mr. Quayle is not much
a better role model, if at all, than
Murphy Brown, andmoreover, is not
as funny, at least not intentionally so.
Should we brace ourselves for
Quayle’s next hapless television
sitcom target of scorn? Perhaps
Quayle’s next policy stand should be
to encourage everybody to dress like
him, in WASPy and preppy attire. In
that case, the natural bull’s-eye of
shame is one Mr. Cliff Clavin, the
perpetually white-socked mailman on
l‘Cheers.” It is a disgrace to the nation,
Quayle might think, to see a man
dressed so gaudily, a man whose tacky
manner of dress shut him out of the
Reagan years’ prosperity. Watch out,
Cliff.
Todd Burger it a Junior philosophy m^Jor
and a Daily NebraAan columnist.
