A Kinder, Gentler Spate of Quayle Jokes

In what his allies might consider progress of sorts, the many jokes about Vice President Dan Quayle have been getting kinder and gentler.

“At first the jokes had a nasty edge, the spoiled-rich-kid-draft-dodger-cheat,” said S. Robert Lichter, co-director of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, which monitors not only the television networks’ evening news broadcasts but also NBC’s “Tonight” show to assess what the public hears over the airwaves.

“Then it became the kind of joke you make about a guy who’s dumb but sweet. . . . Quayle humor has become almost a genre: Dan Quayle, the lovable lunkhead.”

Tone Has Softened

Old-style Quayle joke: “President Bush was in Canada over the weekend,” comedian Jay Leno, who has made the vice president something of a personal speciality, said on the Feb. 13 “Tonight” show. “He asked Dan Quayle to go with him, but Quayle said, ‘I don’t have to go, because my Dad can get me into the National Guard.’ ”

But the number of jokes about Quayle has declined, Lichter said, and their tone has softened.

New-style Quayle joke: “President Bush visited a Virginia high school the other day,” Leno said on March 30. “Spoke to the students about the importance of education. He gave a dramatic example. If you study hard and get good grades, you can grow up to be President. But if you didn’t study, and you goofed off--well, Dan, you want to come out here, please?”

At the recent Gridiron Dinner, the annual white-tie forum at which Washington journalists ridicule the officials they cover, Quayle was the favored target of nearly every speaker.

That drew lots of laughs, except from Quayle and President George Bush, who spent those moments staring at his program, and Marilyn Quayle, who angrily glared at her husband’s tormentors.

But Quayle had his chance to respond, in a speech to the group that brought him generally high marks as a good sport.

Quayle joke on himself: “The President has been so supportive of me,” he said. “The other day he called me into the Oval Office and said, ‘I know you’ve had some rough times, and I want to do something that will show the nation what faith I have in you, in your maturity and sense of responsibility.’ ” Pause. “ ‘Would you like a puppy?’ ”

And in his speech last week to the World Affairs Council in Philadelphia, Quayle opened a review of his recent trip to Asia with an account of the President’s instructions to him before he left.

“President Bush called me in,” Quayle recalled, smiling, “and he said, ‘Our relations with the Pacific Rim nations are very important to the United States.’ ” Pause. “ ‘But I’m going to let you go anyway.’ ”