So, when an acquaintance told me about “Murphy Brown,” I felt I needed to investigate further. It turns out she’s a fictional television character created in the 1980s by #DianeEnglish, focusing on a crusading investigative reporter played by actress #CandiceBergen. But that’s not the least of it. In the 1980s, as I’m told, #MurphyBrown was famous for taking on some of the big issues and political figures of her day, for example, engaging in a fictitious but quite humorous running feud with U.S. Vice President Dan Quayle.
The fact that Murphy is fictitious is inconsequential, in my opinion. After all, in my own newspaper days, I quite often created made-up characters to help tell a story, like Silence Dogood, among others.
Apparently, Murphy Brown has now been resurrected as a new television series, picking up where she left off in the 1980s. And this could not be a better time for that! With all the shenanigans going on in our nation’s capital these days, Murphy’s type of gutsy, witty, acerbic, and courageous reporting is exactly what’s needed to get our country out of the trouble it’s in. The journalistic integrity that made her such a cultural icon over 20 years ago is even more relevant today.
One of the most recent examples of this is an episode in which she’s asked to interview a controversial, ultraconservative politician who’s on a publicity tour to promote his new book. Murphy declines to do the interview, saying she doesn’t want to further his agenda of hatred, bigotry, divisiveness, and right-wing propaganda by giving him free air time on her news program.
However, despite this rejection, the politician tracks her down anyway, and so Murphy proceeds to rake him over the coals, giving him the sort of no-holds-barred, scathing treatment she would have done on live TV, had it come down to that. She even calls him a "sad dinosaur, soon to be extinct."
I would definitely encourage you, my readers, to check out this very entertaining and highly provocative television program at the earliest opportunity. In fact, if you have the ability to do what you modern people call “streaming” past episodes, it would be well worth your while.
Sometimes well-crafted, very pointed humor is the best way to fight injustice!
Your humble servant,
B.Franklin
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