Did you ever read it?

It was while I was in high School that the media blew a gasket at then Vice President Dan Quayle's Murphy Brown example of a fatherless child. I wasn't into politics then and didn't know much about it. Apparently Murphy Brown, a woman on a television show, was having a child out of wedlock. The VP used this as an example of everything that was wrong in our society and the media unrespectfully disagreed.

And for those concerned about children growing up in poverty, we should
know this: marriage is probably the best anti-poverty program of them all. Among
families headed by married couples today, there is a poverty rate of 5.7
percent. But 33.4 percent of families are headed by a single mother are in
poverty today.

I had never read the speech that Dan Quayle gave until today. I have to thank another blogger, Clayton Cramer for this now. Go read the whole thing. I don't think I'll ever be able to laugh at another Dan Quayle joke again.

I know it is not fashionable to talk about moral values, but we need to do
it. Even though our cultural leaders in Hollywood, network TV, the national
newspapers routinely jeer at them, I think that most of us in this room know
that some things are good, and other things are wrong. Now it's time to make the
discussion public.

In the end, the media and hollywood refused to let the public discussion that Dan Quayle had called for happen. There was merely a bash-fest of this very important man and all reason behind the speech thrown out. If it weren't for the blogs always looking over the shoulder of the media, this could easily happen again.