(When this post was originally published the wrong title appeared. We're republishing it just for the sake of having the right title on the right post. Our bad.)
We of a certain age remember an amusing dialogue between then-Vice President Dan Quayle, the Republican presidential candidate, and Murphy Brown, a fictional TV news personality played by Candice Bergen.
The story arc of the 1991-92 season of the show (titled "Murphy Brown") focused on Murphy's pregnancy and decision to raise her child as a single mother. On May 19, 1992, the day after Murphy's fictional childbearing episode was aired, Quayle gave a speech on the nation's social ills in San Francisco in which he said:
Bearing babies irresponsibly is simply wrong. Failing to support children one has fathered is wrong and we must be unequivocal about this. It doesn’t help matters when primetime 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.¹
The show's producers didn't take that challenge lying down. The hapless Quayle became the target of merciless pranking from the outset of the next season. When Murphy laments to her colleagues about the vice president's criticism of her life choice one of them simply says, "Murphy, it's Dan Quayle."²
That line, with the veep's name pronounced laced with equal parts disdain, scorn and contempt, is in my opinion one of the best-delivered in television history.
Fast forward to 2023, and Republican politicians are again--or still--struggling to discern between fiction and the real world.
This time the fictional character is the much beloved all-American Barbie, who finally has her very own feature length live-action motion picture. And who should come along trying to spoil it? None but the despiser of everything good, pure and innocent, Senator Rafael Edward Cruz of Texas.
Here's Cruz claiming the movie about a doll's desire to find her way to the real world is anything but:
There's a scene in "Barbie," where there is this map of the world, and it's drawn like with crayon. I mean, it's really a very simple cartoon. And so they have this blockish thing that is called "Asia." And then they've drawn what are called the nine-dashes . . . .
This is Chinese communist propaganda in which the Chinese are asserting sovereignty over the entirety of the South China Sea.³
Excuse us? Did the junior senator from the state of Texas just say that a movie about a doll's daydream contains Chinese propaganda?
Yes, in fact, he did.
As a child of the 60s I can authoritatively say that anybody that paranoid has to be very, very seriously messed up. Nor is this the first time Cruz has taken on the fantasy world. Not long ago he tangled with Big Bird and came out second.
The people of Texas actually elected this clown to office? Come on, Texans. The eyes of the rest of us are upon you.
I almost hate to say it, but Cruz isn't the only Republican wingnut who's seeing the ghost of Mao Zedong wearing a pink dress and pirouetting across movie screens this summer. But I won't get started.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
--- Diogenes: 27 July 2023
¹ https://publicapologycentral.com/apologia-archive/political-2/dan-quayle-murphy-brown/. Downloaded 27 July 2023.
² https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TakeThat/LiveActionTV. Downloaded 27 July 2023.
³ https://www.businessinsider.com/ted-cruz-barbie-movie-chinese-communist-propaganda-2023-7. Downloaded 27 July 2023.