TV legend Candice Bergen was on hand Sunday (September 15) night for the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards to present the award for Best Actress in a Comedy Series to Hacks star Jean Smart.
But before she got to the business of handing out the award, she had a little something to say about her multiple Emmy-winning series, Murphy Brown, and how it relates to certain current events.
“In one classic moment, my character was attacked by the vice president, Dan Quayle… when Murphy became pregnant and decided to raise the baby as a single mother,” she remembered, citing his very public and publicized reaction to the show’s Season 4 finale.
Then, in the run-up to the 1992 election, in which George H.W. Bush and his running mate were up for re-election (unsuccessfully, as history would prove), Quayle responded to the storyline where the titular character gave birth to a son and decided to raise him as a single mother. The incumbent VP said in a speech that the series was “mocking the importance of fathers, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another ‘lifestyle choice.’”
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This led to a nationwide conversation on the subject of the morality of single motherhood that even included an infamous New York Times cover story that questioned whether Murphy Brown was a “tramp.”
“Oh, how far we’ve come,” Bergen joked at the 2024 Emmys. “Today, a Republican candidate for president and vice president would never attack a woman… So as they say my work here is done.” She went on to cleverly jab at J.D. Vance, who is today’s GOP vice presidential nominee and mocked non-mothers as “childless cat ladies,” by closing her introduction with “Meow.”
Candice Bergen, who famously drew the ire of then-Vice President Dan Quayle when Murphy Brown raised a child as a single mother, reflects on how much has (not) changed since then in one of the #Emmys best moments. pic.twitter.com/4Gn5DbXAop— Jarett Wieselman (@JarettSays) September 16, 2024
This was one of the few politically-oriented moments of the evening. Another included The Bear star Lisa Colón-Zayas telling fellow Latinas to “vote for your own interests” in the upcoming election.
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