Has Hollywood really jumped the shark and is admitting it has no ideas? Murphy Brown - Granite Grok

Has Hollywood really jumped the shark and is admitting it has no ideas? Murphy Brown

Murphy Brown and childWe’ve been subjected to years of movie sequels and prequels and our fair of TV show retreads.  The prime contemporary examples of the latter are the reboots of Roseanne with its entire cast (really, can you imagine Roseanne as a Trump supporter) and now one of the “iconic” TV shows that turned itself into a Progressive culture war spear:

‘Murphy Brown’ Revival Set At CBS With Star Candice Bergen & Creator Diane English

Another beloved comedy series is coming back for a new installment on its original network. CBS has given a 13-episode series order to Murphy Brown, a revival of the 1988 sitcom with its creator Diane English and star Candice Bergen both set to return. Warner Bros. TV, which was behind the original series, is the sole studio. Bergen will reprise her role as the famous investigative journalist and TV anchor at the FYI network, as Murphy Brown returns to a world of cable news, social media, fake news and a very different political and cultural climate. I hear talks are underway with other original cast members to return.

Immediately, I thought “have they no original ideas left in their collective Progressives heads?” (acknowledging the vast tilt to the Left)?  Quick, think to yourself – how many reboots / retoos / reruns have you seen branded as “brand new” only to realize it is the tired mush we’ve seen before – and in this case a LONG time ago (30 years ago in this case). So WHY are they doing this now?

In 2012, English said that she was having conversations with CBS about bringing Murphy Brown back for a few episodes during the election year. Chatter about a Murphy Brown revival restarted a year ago, around the time of Donald Trump’s inauguration, with rumors about English mulling an updated version to take on the new political climate and holding informal meetings with Bergen and some of the show’s former writers to brainstorm ideas.

Yeah, politics.  And you can be sure that a good part of this mission will be, once again, want to put yet another butthurt on the GOP and the current President.  And no doubt they will do what almost every other show coming out of Hollywood does – mock, denigrate, and make sport of “The Others” (that would be you and I – Conservatives and those of faith) that do not share “their values”.  After all, it’s who they are and it’s what they do and live for (“the progressives then criticized virtually every aspect of our traditional way of life, recommending reforms or “social reorganization” on a sweeping scale, the primary engine of which was to be a new, “positive” role for the state.“) because NO one is allowed to question the Progressive orthodoxy and remain unscathed.  But this isn’t my original Quick Thought (which isn’t turning out to be all that Quick anymore).  No, it’s more of this reason (reformatted, emphasis mine):

20 years later, it turns out Dan Quayle was right about Murphy Brown and unmarried moms

On May 19, 1992, as the presidential campaign season was heating up, Vice President Dan Quayle delivered a family-values speech that came to define him nearly as much as his spelling talents. Speaking at the Commonwealth Club of California, he chided Murphy Brown — the fictional 40-something, divorced news anchor played by Candice Bergen on a CBS sitcom — for her decision to have a child outside of marriage.  Bearing babies irresponsibly is simply wrong,” the vice president said. “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.”

Quayle’s argument — that Brown was sending the wrong message, that single parenthood should not be encouraged — erupted into a major campaign controversy.

It was a big deal at the time and one of those tipping points in the culture war that Progressives have thrust upon us on all fronts – the Progressives of the late 1800s and the early 1900s started the ball rolling and the Franklin School recognized that Socialism had to be deployed by other mechanisms here in the US – not a economic class warfare but a cultural one.  Andrew Breitbart made it clear with his statement that “Politics is downstream from Culture”.

Murphy Brown was just one of their spears in helping to accomplish what Progressives want – the diminution of the family unit.  Progressives had no problem with single unwed women bearing children out of wedlock – after all, The State could play both traditional roles of Husband and Father with just more and more social programs, right?  Feminism was gaining speed at the time and in large part, we heard that phrase “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”. Men were anachronistic, old fashioned, and out of date – worthless.  Progressives smile.

But it hasn’t worked out all that well.  Sure, there are those high status / high monied professional women that can afford the accoutrements to raise a child – nannies, sitters, chefs, housekeepers and the like – but there is still the absence of a father figure in those kids’ lives.  I know it well; I was basically raised by a single Mom and while she worked her butt off at sometimes menial jobs to support us, I know what that missing part was at the time – and I had to revisit that hole again in raising my two boys as I had to make it up on the fly and prayed to God I was getting it right.

While this was written back in 2012, it is still on point and even more correct as the out of wedlock ratios have only gotten worse – our family orientation that provided that necessary bedrock for our democrat Society is crumbling.  Again, the words from the author from the Brookings Institute (not exactly a conservative hotbed thinktank)”

Twenty years later, Quayle’s words seem less controversial than prophetic. The number of single parents in America has increased dramatically: The proportion of children born outside marriage has risen from roughly 30 percent in 1992 to 41 percent in 2009. For women under age 30, more than half of babies are born out of wedlock. A lifestyle once associated with poverty has become mainstream. The only group of parents for whom marriage continues to be the norm is the college-educated.

Some argue that these changes are benign. Many children who in the past would have had two married parents could have two cohabiting parents instead. Why should the lack of a legal or religious tie affect anyone’s well-being? There are three reasons to be concerned about this dramatic shift in family life.

First, marriage is a commitment that cohabitation is not. Taking a vow before friends and family to support another person “until death do us part” signals a mutual sense of shared responsibility that cannot be lightly dismissed. Cohabitation is more fragile — cohabiting parents split up before their fifth anniversary at about twice the rate of married parents. Often, this is because the father moves on, leaving the mother not just with less support but with fewer marriage prospects. For her, marriage requires finding a partner willing to take responsibility for someone else’s kids.

As we ran our daycare center back in the early ‘Naughts, we starkly saw the difference, noticeably with the kids as one “father figure” after another came into their lives for a few weeks or months and then blinked out.  They became more sullen and wary in a number of ways and acted out.  After all, who was there as a positive role model?  And we had kids who became more attached to the teachers than their parent – after all, who spent more time with them and consoled them more often?  It was heartbreaking to see them crying to not go at the end of the day for those that Life was not dealing them a great hand at home.

Second, a wealth of research strongly suggests that marriage is good for children. Those who live with their biological parents do better in school and are less likely to get pregnant or arrested. They have lower rates of suicide, achieve higher levels of education and earn more as adults. Meanwhile, children who spend time in single-parent families are more likely to misbehave, get sick, drop out of high school and be unemployed.

It isn’t clear why children who live with their unmarried biological parents don’t do as well as kids who live with married ones. Adults who marry may be different from those who cohabit, divorce or become unwed mothers. Although studies try to adjust for these differences, researchers can’t measure all of them. People in stable marriages may have better relationship skills, for instance, or a greater philosophical or religious commitment to union that improves parenting. Still, raising children is a daunting responsibility. Two committed parents typically have more time and resources to do it well.

Third, marriage brings economic benefits. It usually means two breadwinners, or one breadwinner and a full-time, stay-at-home parent with no significant child-care expenses. Unlike Murphy Brown — who always had the able Eldin by her side — most women do not have the flexibility afforded a presumably highly paid broadcast journalist. And it’s not just a cliche that two can live more cheaply than one; a single set of bills for rent, utilities and other household expenses makes a difference. Though not necessarily better off than a cohabiting couple, a married family is much better off than its single-parent counterpart.

We made that second choice – one breadwinner and a full time at home parent.  Sure, there were sacrifices that we had to make that others didn’t have to.  However, we said that our kids were to be first.  I’ve told my Youngest that when you get married you give up a lot of things.  When you have kids, you need to give up everything.  And yes, that is the attitude of someone that doesn’t believe that marriage is just for the gratification of the spouses – that’s selfishness magnified.  Having kids is responsibility on steriods – act and live accordingly.

I’ve been studying single mothers since long before “Murphy Brown” was on the air. In a study I co-authored with Adam Thomas, I put them into hypothetical households with demographically similar unmarried men who, in principle, would be good marriage partners. Through this virtual matchmaking, we showed that child poverty rates would fall by as much as 20 percent in an America with more two-parent households.

And here’s the kicker that almost all Progressives hate, reject, and fight against:

In later research, Ron Haskins and I learned that if individuals do just three things — finish high school, work full time and marry before they have children — their chances of being poor drop from 15 percent to 2 percent. Mitt Romney has cited this research on the campaign trail, but these issues transcend presidential politics. Stronger public support for single-parent families — such as subsidies or tax credits for child care, and the earned-income tax credit — is needed, but no government program is likely to reduce child poverty as much as bringing back marriage as the preferable way of raising children.

And they hate it because of the ideal in this next sentence:

The government has a limited role to play. It can support local programs and nonprofit organizations working to reduce early, unwed childbearing through teen-pregnancy prevention efforts, family planning, greater opportunities for disadvantaged youth or programs to encourage responsible relationships. But in the end, Dan Quayle was right. Unless the media, parents and other influential leaders celebrate marriage as the best environment for raising children, the new trend — bringing up baby alone — may be irreversible.

Isabel Sawhill is a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, where she co-directs the Center on Children and Families. She is a co-author, with Ron Haskins, of “Creating an Opportunity Society.”

They hate it because it attacks their religious outlook that a large, active, and intrusive Big Government can solve all ills of society.  After all, those single moms are now victims (according to the latest Democrat philosophy) and must be saved, right? And who better than, not a loving husband, but that thing to which we all belong?

And so we are to be subjected to Murphy Brown’s ideology once again via retread?  Not me, that’s for sure.

And no, this was not a Quick Thought.

(H/T: Deadline Hollywood)

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