On May 19 , 1992 , Quayle gave a speech entitled '' Reflections on Urban America '' to the Commonwealth Club of California on the subject of the Los Angeles riots . In this speech , Quayle blamed the violence on a decay of moral values and family structure in American society . In an aside , he cited the single mother title character in the television program '' Murphy Brown '' as an example of how popular culture contributes to this " poverty of values " , saying , " It does n'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 ' . " The " Murphy Brown speech " became one of the most memorable incidents of the 1992 campaign . Long after the outcry had ended , the comment continued to have an effect on U.S. politics . Stephanie Coontz , a professor of family history and the author of several books and essays about the history of marriage , says that this brief remark by Quayle about Murphy Brown " kicked off more than a decade of outcries against the ' collapse of the family . In 2002 , Candice Bergen , the actress who played Brown , said " I never have really said much about the whole episode , which was endless , but his speech was a perfectly intelligent speech about fathers not being dispensable and nobody agreed with that more than I did . " Others interpreted it differently ; singer Tanya Tucker was widely quoted as saying " Who the hell is Dan Quayle to come after single mothers ? " Throughout his time as vice president , Quayle was widely ridiculed in the media and by many in the general public , both in the U.S. and overseas , as an intellectual lightweight and an incompetent individual . Contributing greatly to the perception of Quayle 's incompetence was his tendency to make public statements that were either impossible ( " I have made good judgments in the past . I have made good judgments in the future " ) , self-contradictory ( " ' I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy , but that could change ' " ) , self-contradictory and confused ( " The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation 's history . ... No , not our nation 's , but in World War II . I mean , we all lived in this century . I did n't live in this century , but in this century 's history " ) , or just confused ( such as the comments he made in a May 1989 address to the United Negro College Fund . Commenting on the United Negro College Fund 's slogan — which is " a mind is a terrible thing to waste " — Quayle said , " You take the UNCF model that what a waste it is to lose one 's mind or not to have a mind is being very wasteful . How true that is " )
The Holocaust
The Holocaust
Dan Quayle