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- <text id=92TT2041>
- <title>
- Sep. 14, 1992: TV's Luminaries Leap All Over the Veep
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Sep. 14, 1992 The Hillary Factor
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK, Page 20
- SOCIETY
- TV's Luminaries Leap All Over the Veep
- </hdr><body>
- <p>After weeks of criticism, they use the Emmy show to flail Quayle
- </p>
- <p> "Dan Quayle is like the assistant on the old Vegas TV show:
- you let him answer the phone, but he does not drive the T-bird."
- Thus spake Emmy emcee Dennis Miller in Pasadena, California,
- during TV's annual orgy of self-congratulation. Miller was one
- of the milder critics of the Vice President, Savonarola of the
- small screen ever since he denounced the "cultural elite" of
- Hollywood. In Quayle's eyes, the sins of that group are best
- exemplified by its embrace of single parenthood in the CBS
- sitcom Murphy Brown--and now the Emmys as well, where stars
- reveled in striking back at Indiana's favorite son.
- </p>
- <p> Comedian Richard Lewis observed in his
- stream-of-anxiousness style, "I have this recurring dream.
- Quayle is President, and he's doing Brinkley and he's panicked,
- and he's saying, `Does Sweden have a king or a maitre d'?'" A
- Johnny Carson tribute included puckish Robin Williams'
- suggestion that the Vice President was "one taco short of a
- combination plate." But the heaviest hits came from Murphy
- Brown's heavies: actress Candice Bergen ("I would like to thank
- our writers for not only writing these great words but spelling
- them correctly") and creator Diane English ("As Murphy herself
- said, `I couldn't possibly do a worse job raising my kid alone
- than the Reagans did with theirs'").
- </p>
- <p> Quayle insisted that he never disparaged single mothers
- and that anyone who said otherwise was lying. But his slam of
- Murphy Brown as a promoter of such a choice remains a matter of
- record.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-