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Culture Watch:How Silence Changes Culture
by Lee Warren (Lee's bio)
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On May 19, 1992, Vice-President Dan Quayle gave a speech at Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco entitled "The Poverty of Values" in which he said, "Bearing babies irresponsibly is, simply wrong. Failing to support children one has fathered is wrong. We must be unequivocal about this. It doesn't help matters when prime time TV has Murphy Brown—a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid, professional woman—mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another 'lifestyle choice.'"
Some scoffed. Some weren't even that nice. But in her heart and in her silence, Candice Bergen knew that Dan Quayle was right. "I never have really said much about the whole episode, which was endless," Bergen said recently. "But his speech was a perfectly intelligent speech about fathers not being dispensable and nobody agreed with that more than I did."
In 1998 Bergen also told the Los Angeles Times: "I agreed with all of it (Quayle's 1992 speech) except his reference to the show, which he had not seen…but the body of the speech was completely sound." She went on to say, "I had a very difficult time playing Murphy the first year after the baby, as a distant second priority. It was very distressing to me, and I couldn't get them to change it. Just hated it ... I didn't think it was a good message to be sending out."
While those on the left mocked Quayle, Bergen stayed silent for six years—helping to contribute to a culture that accepts single parenthood as a viable option to marriage. But she's not the only one to blame for a decline in cultural standards regarding marriage. I'm confident that most American's don't share Murphy Brown's view of marriage, the question is, what did most Americans say about it around the water-cooler? Across the back-yard fence? At little league baseball games? At dance recitals?
When cultures decline morally, they usually do so at a very slow pace. But beyond a slow pace, they require something else—silence from those who disagree with the new standards. Let's give Ms. Bergen credit, even though it took her a while, she's no longer silent. She admitted that her television program portrayed a bad message. That leaves one question: What about those who disagreed with the message to begin with—are they still silent or have they adapted to the new cultural standard better than Ms. Bergen did?
Copyright 2002, Lee Warren. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
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About Lee Warren: Lee Warren is a freelance writer from Omaha, Nebraska. He has written for various publications and is currently working on a novel. If you are interested in reading more of his work or in receiving his column via e-mail, please go to his website: www.leewarrenjr.com or drop him an e-mail: LeeWJunior@cox.net.
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