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Dan Quayle berated at Murphy Brown last week. The fictional broadcaster just bore a child out of wedlock, and our vice-president said her bastardy contributed to moral decay in America.
(Bastardy
is the begetting of a bastard, another
term not now in vogue. The Sensitivity Police have ruled
that it stigmatizes a love-child
to be called a
bastard,
and to be fair, the condition certainly
isn't the child's fault. But our language suffers from
adultism. I searched diligently in half a dozen linguistic
references for a precise and pejorative term for mother
of a bastard
or father of a bastard,
and came up
empty.)
The actual effect of Murphy Brown's refusal to procure an abortion will not be known for some time -- demographers are watching for a rise in the birthrate of children born to rich, powerful single women -- but otherwise, Quayle was absolutely right.
Bastardy is generally a ticket to failure. The poverty rate for single-mother families is six times higher than for dual-parent families, and it's tough to be poor. Inner-city boys who grow up without fathers are more likely to join gangs. The failure of men to pay child-support is a national disgrace.
Quayle did offer a solution -- eliminate the marriage penalties in the welfare system, although he missed another easy remedy, putting the pictures of deadbeat dads on milk cartons. If it will find missing children, it ought to find missing fathers, too.
He accused our cultural leaders in Hollywood, network
TV, the national newspapers
of routinely jeering at
moral values.
This scoffing has produced our current
state of national decay: narcissism, greed, selfishness,
the elevation of form over substance, etc.
Again Quayle is right. Hollywood can make almost anybody, no matter how vacuous, rich and famous. Network TV provides an unsurpassed platform for propaganda from a resonant voice and sincere countenance. National newspapers often give credence to calculated vagueness and blatant falsehoods. For years I've been wondering how Ronald Reagan gained power and bankrupted our country, and now I know how it happened and whom to blame.
Quayle also observed that Murphy Brown was mocking
the importance of fathers.
But the vice-president's message would have been stronger if he had used concrete and specific examples of the importance of children knowing their fathers, something like this:
I can speak personally on this issue. If I hadn't
known my father, who would have pulled strings to get me
into the National Guard? I might have gotten drafted and
shipped to Vietnam, and I might not be around today to be
speaking to you.
For a more recent demonstration of the importance of
fathers, consider Neil Bush. Would he have ever become a
bank director at age 30 if he didn't know his father? Even
if he had somehow so risen in the world, who would have
postponed a federal shut-down of the bank until after the
election if Neil didn't know his father? Neil might have
gone to prison.
As you see, a father can keep you out of combat or
the penitentiary. That's why it's so important for a child
to have one.
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