2503 Dan Quayle was right

Lloyd Bentsen was a good man, and served his country well. He was a brave WWII pilot, and served in many capacities. The media is not serving him well, however, by quipping at the end of every 20 second obit his comment about Dan Quayle not being Jack Kennedy. I think I heard 3 or 4 announcements of his death, and it was like a template--do these news guys all use rip and read script?

Dan Quayle may well have been a much better man than Jack Kennedy--we'll never know. Jack might have become his brother Ted. One is remembered for being assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald and the other by the media. But it wasn't too long after Bush and Quayle left office, that Atlantic Monthly printed the article, "Dan Quayle was Right" by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead. In that article she reminds us again of the terrible toll divorce and single motherhood has taken on America's children. Quayle, you'll remember, was unmercifully ridiculed and demonized for taking on the fictional Murphy Brown, whose writers turned her into American's poster mom, who with friends and boyfriends, attempts to raise her child.

"On the night Murphy Brown became an unwed mother, 34 million Americans tuned in, and CBS posted a 35 percent share of the audience. The show did not stir significant protest at the grass roots and lost none of its advertisers. The actress Candice Bergen subsequently appeared on the cover of nearly every women´s and news magazine in the country and received an honorary degree at the University of Pennsylvania as well as an Emmy award. The show´s creator, Diane English, popped up in Hanes stocking ads. Judged by conventional measures of approval, Murphy Brown´s motherhood was a hit at the box office."

Ten years later in 2002 he was interviewed on CNN and asked if he'd say anything differently, and he said no, and he was pleased to see so many fatherhood initiatives.

Do you know that immigrant children are healthier than our native-born children? As our immigrants assimilate and take on our casual family relationships (i.e., shacking up instead of marrying), their children become less healthy. They have poverty, crowded conditions at home, uneducated parents, no health insurance, and probably a lot of stress in the home, yet they are healthier because they are more likely (in that first generation) to have parents married to each other and living together.

Dan Quayle was right. The left has continued to pillory him, panning his 1996 book, "The American Family; discovering the values that make us strong." Their only plan to fight poverty is more government programs, but Uncle Sam makes a terrible step-father.

Dan Quayle
Lloyd Bentsen
fatherhood