COVER STORY : ‘Murphy Brown’: A Diversion or a Legitimate Cultural Debate?

How is it that the line between reality and fiction could be so blurred that a TV entertainment show is able to set off a national debate over something done by a make-believe character?

The furor over “Murphy Brown” raises questions about the relationship between politics and culture in America today. Many observers find it perplexing that a vice president has been engaged in a debate with a fictional newswoman.

Neil Postman, however, is not surprised.

“Cultures organize themselves around symbols, and most cultural disputes take place over symbols, such as flag-burning,” said Postman, chairman of the department of culture and communication at New York University and author of “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” a study of politics and popular culture. “Like it or not, TV sitcoms have become America’s most popular form of literature. The values and actions of the characters portrayed there are of great importance to the culture.”

Precisely what Murphy Brown symbolizes in this debate varies in the eye of the beholder.

“The debate on ‘Murphy Brown’ is an entirely diversionary tactic--smoke and mirrors to get our attention off of unemployment and the crisis in the economy,” said Arlie Hochschild, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley.

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Hochschild, the author of “The Second Shift,” a study of women’s work in jobs and at home, contends that Murphy Brown’s upper-class status makes her a “safer” target for Vice President Dan Quayle and his supporters than more typical unwed mothers.

“Focusing on Murphy Brown makes it look as if Quayle is attacking a white, affluent woman when, in fact, the real focus of the Republicans’ ire is minority, inner-city single parents,” Hochschild said. “In an election year, it would be more difficult for Quayle to make an outright attack on poor, single mothers. By focusing on ‘Murphy Brown,’ Quayle is able, in a hidden way, to say to poor women, ‘This is your fault that you’re alone and jobs have fled your neighborhood; your only problems are your “values” and what you believe.’ ”

But Christopher Lasch, a conservative social philosopher, said that he thinks the Republicans are onto something serious with their attacks on the “cultural elite,” however “crudely” they defined the argument in terms of a TV show. “There are widespread apprehensions in the country about the deterioration of American family life,” Lasch maintained. “Many people wonder whether the undeniable power of the media is being wielded by a small group of people who are producing a lot of entertainment that is decadent and nihilistic.”

In a recent interview, David Beckwith, Quayle’s press secretary, maintained that the vice president’s highly publicized remarks last May decrying Murphy Brown’s decision to have a baby out of wedlock were “really an attack on Hollywood, not on a single character, Murphy Brown.

“Murphy Brown was an example used to get people’s attention,” he said, “and it succeeded beyond our wildest hopes, perhaps because the show is one of the most heavily promoted pieces of popular culture around. I know I’m painting with a broad brush here, but Hollywood’s values are screwed up. They have a left-wing political agenda that mocks the values of family, hard work and honesty. They’re profiting from an explosion of sex, drugs and violence. If they don’t think TV influences behavior, why do they charge hundreds of thousands of dollars to sell products in TV commercials?”

The intention, Beckwith said, was never to knock single mothers or fathers, “but it is statistically and demonstrably provable that a child raised in a single-parent family is more likely to live in poverty, drop out of school and engage in crime. Glamorizing single parenthood, as ‘Murphy Brown’ does, makes it an acceptable, if not desirable, lifestyle.”

Steven Peterman is not convinced.

“I’d feel more comfortable with the vice president’s comments if he’d actually seen our show and if this weren’t an election year where his party is behind in the polls,” said Peterman, who has moved up this season to be executive producer of “Murphy Brown” with his partner, Gary Dontzig. “We happen to be among those who do believe that media do influence society. That’s why we were so careful in how we structured the ‘arc’ of episodes leading up to Murphy’s pregnancy.”

Peterman and Dontzig believe the show was responsible in the depiction of Murphy’s decision to have a baby on her own. “This was not some casual, flippant choice,” Dontzig said. “We take responsibility for the fact that Murphy (did) become pregnant after having sex with her ex-husband. But he has come back into her life asking her to marry him, she is not a promiscuous woman and (in an age of AIDS), they had blood tests beforehand. She does have a moment of passion, but, as she said, most of her friends her age are going to fertility clinics (because they haven’t been able to get pregnant).”

This season, the producers intend to show some of the difficulties that even a wealthy single mother like Murphy might encounter. “Murphy is not going to be automatically good at being a mother--she’s going to be struggling with something that doesn’t necessarily come naturally to her,” Peterman said. “And she’s going to be struggling to find a way to balance motherhood and the job that has meant so much to her.”

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Matt Groening, creator of “The Simpsons,” which had its own run-in with President Bush this summer after the chief executive expressed his desire for Americans to act more like “The Waltons” than Fox’s favorite cartoon family, acknowledges that the Hollywood creative community may be more liberal than many other Americans, but he argues that Quayle and Bush themselves may be out of touch.

“The Simpsons are an exaggerated look at American family life,” Groening said, “but I think what people can relate to on the show is that this is a family that is full of love but also driven crazy by each other at the same time. Rigid politicians don’t acknowledge this feeling called ambivalence.”

“The Simpsons” didn’t adopt “Murphy Brown’s” plan of waiting for the new season to respond. Groening and his staff inserted footage of Bush’s remarks at the beginning of an old episode and had Bart Simpson respond, “Hey, we’re just like the Waltons. We’re praying for the end of the depression too.”

“We got a full range of responses to the show,” Groening said. “Most people loved it, but a few people were irate that we were disrespectful to the President.”

Peterman said that Quayle’s remarks notwithstanding, “Murphy Brown” also has had a largely favorable response. “If you go simply by the number of viewers last year, we gained far more audience with Murphy’s pregnancy than we lost,” he said. Peterman added, laughing: “If we were really as far off the mark as the vice president seems to think we are, we wouldn’t be one of the highest-rated shows in the country. Right now, we would compare our popularity very favorably with his.”

In his book “Why Americans Hate Politics,” political reporter E. J. Dionne Jr. argued that one reason Americans are turning away from voting and politicians is that both liberals and conservatives in recent years have framed arguments in extreme, election-year terms--Willie Horton and the flag factories of the 1988 campaign, for example--that work well in “attack ads” but don’t shed much light on how to solve problems. In reality, Dionne said, public opinion on issues such as abortion is far more complex than the series of “false dichotomies” presented to voters.

But the “Murphy Brown” debate over “family values” is a legitimate topic for political debate, he contends. “I believe voters are genuinely concerned about what’s happening to American families today,” Dionne said. “It’s fair for the Democrats to raise the issue of whether the Republicans have been cutting actual programs that might benefit children and families. It’s also legitimate to have some kind of debate on whether TV is setting a good example.”

New York University’s Postman said he thinks that this presidential election might be the first in modern times to pit the power of symbols like “Murphy Brown” against the weight of hard economic times.

“In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan moved voters with his vision of ‘Morning in America,’ ” Postman said. “Today there are whole industries--public relations and advertising--that are devoted to moving people through symbols. People need symbols, and both Bill Clinton and George Bush will need to find symbols that can inspire people and motivate them. But if people are suffering economically, there may be a limit to how much symbols like ‘Murphy Brown’ and ‘the cultural elite’ can affect them. If the economy is lousy, there is only so much sustenance that people can get from cultural symbols.”