In recent days I have been quiet about the election. My outrage has been eclipsed by anxiety. Having a significant history of health issues, it's the kind of stress the night before surgery when the outcome is not nearly in your control. I have a good friend who has been flying from LA to Nevada to campaign for HOPE and I now get regular invitations from local political soul mates inviting me to phone bank parties. Indeed, this is a time to kick it in high gear and be as actively vocal as possible. But I am struggling. I am frozen in time, holding my breath like I am watching a car accident in progress waiting to see if the one car slams into the other or is able to stop just short of disaster. I have been nervously joking about having to move to the south of France if my country elects Palin to be "in charge of the Senate" and second in command. Hopefully, I will not have to execute this plan and Sarah Palin will become an anecdote in the recent history of our country, albeit a humiliating one. And that made me think about another embarrassment.
I saved a copy of the August 1992 Esquire magazine with Candice Bergen on the cover. It was at the height of a 10 year run of “Murphy Brown" when Candice Bergen's title character got pregnant and chose not to marry the baby's father, but to become a single mother. This controversial plotline made the tv show the focus of a national discussion about "family values" during the presidential election that year. On May 19, 1992, Vice-President J. Danfoth Quayle spoke at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco in what is now referred to as "The Murphy Brown Speech" and criticized the character for ignoring the importance of fathers and choosing to have a baby alone. In the 1992 season opener, "You Say Potatoe, I Say Potato", Murphy's fictional TV program, "FYI", airs a segment celebrating diversity using real footage from Quayle's speech. The Esquire cover celebrates Candice Bergen as "Woman of the Year", but there is a priceless article called, "Airhead Apparent", about Dan Quayle and his status as the butt of the nation's jokes. What strikes me is how the article reads when the name Quayle is substitued with Palin. It is my sincerest hope that in eleven days, Sarah Palin will take her place in American history alongside Dan Quayle (but without having actually held national office), because I know from experience that Time Heals All National Humiliation (well...kinda, sorta).
My favorite item in this issue is on page 124, "I Am the Future! The 1988 Campaign Index", an account of gaffs and bloopers from the veep in the months leading up to his election. Here are some highlights:
10/18 — announces, "I am the future."
9/15 — calls the holocaust "an obscene period in our nation's history."
9/15 — claims, "I didn't live in this century."
10/27 — exhibits ignorance of the homeless problem ("I would guess that there's adequate low-income housing in the country.")
10/6 — explains inability at debate to say what he'd do if he suddenly became president ("I had not had that question before")
10/9 — explains why questions about his parents' ties to John Birch Society aren't relevant ("Because. Because I say it isn't.)
8/17 — mangles cliché to California delegation ("The real question for 1988 is whether we’re going to go forward to tomorrow or past to the —to the back!")
8/19 — refuses to say if he offered to take his name off the ticket because it's "not a yes or no question."
8/17 — is remembered by political science professor ("He was as vapid a student as I can ever recall...Nothing came out of his mouth that was worth remembering.")
8/16 — rubs kiss from Barbara Bush off cheek.
8/25 — says he defended steel quotas in face-to-face encounter with Reagan by looking him "right across the eyes."
9/8 — says Republicans "understand importance of bondage between parent and child."
10/5 — tells debate audience proof of his commitment to environment is "I take my children hiking and fishing, walking in the woods."
10/18 — tells eleven-year-old girl he'd want her to have baby if she was raped by her father ("You're a very strong woman. Though this would be a traumatic experience that you would never forget, I think that you would be very successful in life.")
10/4 — is told "You are such a weenie" by University of Pennsylvania student.
(Alas, the student in the last item was not me. I had graduated 2 years prior.)
