Actress Candice Bergen Delivers Scathing Jab At Vance In Emmys Speech To Roaring Applause

DISCLAIMER: This article was first published on September 17, 2024.

Back in the early 1990s, in an episode that was very much a precursor for the future, then-Vice President Dan Quayle got into a feud with a fictional character, Murphy Brown.

Brown, played by Candice Bergen, was a network news journalist on the CBS TV series of the same name from 1988 to 1998. In 1992, the series did a storyline in which the Murphy character, who was unmarried, became pregnant and chose to raise her child as a single mother. That May, amidst the presidential campaign, Vice President Quayle gave a speech in which he ripped the character for “mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone.”

This was a significant controversy throughout that summer, and when the series returned in the fall, it incorporated the vice president’s comments into the show:

“Family values” were a big issue in that presidential election, in which President George H.W. Bush and his running mate, Dan Quayle, lost the election to Bill Clinton and Al Gore that November.

In the Trump era, politicans feuding with celebrities has become a far-from rare occurrence. And when Murphy Brown returned for a brief reboot during Trump’s presidency, it pulled a similar storyline, with Murphy arguing with a videotape of Donald Trump.

On Sunday, at the Emmy Awards, Candice Bergen once again squared off against a Republican politician, this time the man who’s running for Dan Quayle’s old job, J.D. Vance.

Referencing the Quayle controversy from 32 years earlier, Bergen joked that “oh, how far we’ve come.”

“Today, a Republican candidate for vice president would never attack a woman for having kids, so as they say, my work here is done. Meow.”

Candice Bergen, who famously drew the ire of then-Vice President Dan Quayle when Murphy Brown raised a child as a single mother, reflects on how much has (not) changed since then in one of the #Emmys best moments. pic.twitter.com/4Gn5DbXAop

— Jarett Wieselman (@JarettSays) September 16, 2024

Vance, with his “childless cat ladies” comments, may have ripped women for not having kids, as opposed to having them, but the point still stands. Bergen, in just over a minute, managed to reference both that and Vance’s bogus comments about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating cats.

As for Dan Quayle, he made a brief cameo in the Trump era, when his fellow Republican vice president from Indiana, Mike Pence, reached out to him prior to January 6, and asked his advice on whether he had the power as vice president to reject Democratic electoral votes.

“Mike, you have no flexibility on this. None. Zero. Forget it. Put it away,’ Quayle told Pence, according to Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s 2021 book, Peril. “‘I do know the position you’re in,’ Quayle responded. ‘I also know what the law is. You listen to the parliamentarian. That’s all you do. You have no power.’”