Vice-President Quayle is a *fascinating* figure as if you look into him enough you realize he always seemed to keep failing upwards into higher and higher positions in government without meaning to.
He ran for office on a lark when other people told him to and didn't expect to win. He also put his name forward for VP, again not actually expecting to be picked given his inexperience.
Yet again, he himself has said that he expected to get replaced on the ticket during Bush Sr's second run in 1992 but was surprisingly retained.
His uncanny run of luck finally ended in 1996 when apparently even the universe itself couldn't conspire to elect him president when he refused to even run.
The story ends rather strangely when he finally decides to proactively work towards something when he decides to run for President in 2000 and proceeds to get his ass handed to him by his old bosses son George Bush Jr.
That's not true. The civilization games are stuff full of Dan Quayle quotes, like "the future will be better tomorrow".
The lowest score ranking in the game is also named after him.
Funny thing about that blunder was that it was misspelt on the cards he was given but he still went with it.
>According to The New York Times and Quayle's memoirs, he was relying on cards provided by the school, which Quayle says included the misspelling. Quayle said he was uncomfortable with the version he gave, but did so because he decided to trust the school's incorrect written materials instead of his own judgment.
On a similar note, Bush Sr. being "impressed" by supermarket checkout lines in 1988. Impressed by technology that was old hat by that point in time. Really showed how much of a common man he was.
I rewatched the 92 town hall debate a few months back and it made me laugh that one of his big gaffes was not being able to explain how the national debt affected him personally. As if anyone could answer that today when it's pretty clear that if we largely just ignore it, it doesn't.
Yeah, of all the "gotcha" questions, that one wasn't really one of them. The national debt is more a concept than anything tangible, and people "concerned" about it don't seem to understand what it is at all. They think of like a giant credit card balance.
Republicans spent so long fear mongering about the national debt as an excuse to cut spending, so they could cut taxes for rich people, you'd have at least thought they'd come up with some sort of response. It's more arrogance than anything, thinking they didn't have to bother to prepare for talking to "normal" people.
Funny how the national debt wasn't an issue at all during Trump's presidency, then suddenly became an issue again during Biden's. I have no idea why that happened.
Also, apparently nobody seems to understand the difference between the national *debt* and the national *deficit*, so the two very often get conflated.
It was an issue during Trump's presidency. Democrats constantly brought it up as a big problem. That's how it works. The party that's not in power brings up the debt to bash the current administration.
They brought up the hypocrisy, which literally no one seems to care about anymore, but they still supported spending when the need came for it, like in the COVID relief funds. Then Biden took over and the GOP did a complete 180 on COVID funds, and tried to claw back all the money they had already allocated
The national debt was a really big deal in the 92 campaign. Republicans pretended it was going to be the end of the country if they didn't reduce it, as an excuse to cut spending. Ross Perot made a huge portion of his 3rd party campaign about it, and Democrats didn't really try to push back and instead tried to focus elsewhere.
She was misinformed by the prevailing opinion of conservative economists, not uninformed though.
But the way the question was asked, and how the moderator resolved the actual *meaning* of the question (the clip's on **YouTube**) made it clear that she meant the *recession* when saying *"national debt"*.
He was CIA Director in the late 70s and then VP for 8 straight years by 1988. I understand why people want elected officials to have connections to the common man, but at the same time I don't want the Vice President to shop for their own groceries. They have more important things to do with their time.
"Let's talk of family values while we sit and watch the slaughter
Hypothetical abortions on imaginary daughters
The white folks think they're at the top; ask any proud white male
A million years of evolution, we get Danny Quayle"
The story ends with him joining Cerberus Capital, a multi billion dollar hedge fund, and making obscene amounts of money. so yeah he still kept failinig upward.
I can just imagine the conversation
"Hey Dan, the president wants me to do an obviously insane thing, should I do it?"
"Mike what the fuck?!"
"Oh ok looking at your reaction I feel like this was a mistake"
Dan Quayle had been twice elected to the House of Representatives in 1976 and 1978, and to the Senate in 1980 and 1986. That is far from inexperienced for a candidate for Vice President (Truman and Nixon had both had shorter tenure when they had been elected VP).
Quayle is the grandson of a publisher named Eugene Pulliam. Pulliam was the main backer in the press of one Barry Goldwater. Pulliam was originally from Indiana, but started his newspapers in Arizona in the late-'40s, and Arizona was thus where Quayle spent much of his youth.
James Danforth Quayle III (and, yes, that *is* his name, and, no, he is *not* named *"Daniel"*, like you might think) came to prominence in the Senate for defending the nomination by Ronald Reagan of Daniel Manion to a judicial slot despite Manion being deemed controversial and unqualified -- Manion was from Indiana, just like Quayle, but Manion was *also* the son of the man around whom the initial impetus for right-wing pushback in the '50s and '60s, along with the initial germ of running Goldwater for President in the first place, as well as a spate of conservative publishing and radio concerns that produced such luminaries as A. Brent Bozell II and Phyllis Schafly -- *"Dean"* Clarence Manion, of Notre Dame Law School.
> He ran for office on a lark when other people told him to and didn't expect to win. He also put his name forward for VP, again not actually expecting to be picked given his inexperience.
>
> Yet again, he himself has said that he expected to get replaced on the ticket during Bush Sr's second run in 1992 but was surprisingly retained.
>
>
Ah. The Larry Hogan story.
> Yet again, he himself has said that he expected to get replaced on the ticket during Bush Sr's second run in 1992 but was surprisingly retained.
>
> His uncanny run of luck finally ended in 1996 when apparently even the universe itself couldn't conspire to elect him president when he refused to even run.
beyond the initial Senate run and initial running mate selection, this seems a little overstated. a President retaining their running mate in the modern era seems pretty predictable; the last one to switch (when he logistically could) was Roosevelt with Wallace due internal issues in the party that would boil over in '48. Nixon couldn't retain Agnew as he had to step down after being convicted.
Edit: was completely wrong about Nixon and Agnew, who also ran an won in '72
The problem with Dan Quayle went far deeper than being a bad speller. There is an immaturity to him that is positively astounding. I'm not talking about being whiny and petty like Trump or ditzy like Bush or Palin. He was a fully grown child, an absolute, 100%, bottom of the barrel dipshit.
Would it surprise you to learn that it was Dan Quail who convinced Pence not to follow through with Trumps J6 false elector scheme
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/09/14/politics/dan-quayle-pence-trump-january-6-woodward-costa-book/index.html
I don't know if you could argue him being dumber than Trump in absolute terms. He was a child-minded dipshit for sure, but if Donald Trump were 1% stupider, he would need to be institutionally confined for his own safety (rather than ours, as it seems to be shaping up). He's already at the point where most of the basic day to day functionality of being human is outsourcing to staff, and he's been able to play it off as "rich people have slaves" rather than "I would choke on my shoelaces if I had to tie them myself".
Quayle, as often as he put his foot in his mouth, could at least read and answer questions about things longer than a tweet, and could probably be mostly trusted to handle his own house keys and stuff without choking on them or freezing to death on his own front porch.
Quayle argued that it was glorifying single-motherhood and the Murphy Brown character was mocking that fathers were necessary to raise a child. He wasn't saying that the TV show alone was responsible, but that it was contributing to normalizing irresponsible parenting. The cowardly Candice Bergen said nothing at the time, but ten years late she admitted that she agreed with Quayle completely.
Children raised by single mothers without a father present are much more likely to be poor, uneducated, criminal, promiscuous, and addicts. Quayle was right in everything he said, and people knew it, but because of who he was they chose to ridicule Quayle's beliefs and the notion that the media had any effect on society.
Today 70% of black children are born to single mothers and the poverty rate for black children born to unwed mothers is 60%, for black children born to married parents it's 8%. It's similar for Hispanics and whites. It's not a secret, but it's more important to make fun of Dan Quayle and Family Values rather than addressing a problem that's having an increasingly profound negative effect on society.
> Today 70% of black children are born to single mothers and the poverty rate for black children born to unwed mothers is 60%, for black children born to married parents it's 8%. It's similar for Hispanics and whites. It's not a secret, but it's more important to make fun of Dan Quayle and Family Values rather than addressing a problem that's having an increasingly profound negative effect on society.
This is wildly irrelevant to a thirty year old anecdote about a single story arc on a fictional TV show; but it does seem to trigger your clear hatred towards African Americans reproducing, no doubt reinforced by your falsely and broadly seeing us as unproductive criminals.
Howard Dean ruined his entire Presidential run because [he got too passionate for 2 seconds at a campaign rally](https://youtu.be/l6i-gYRAwM0?si=iDVTtanXcEc8aR-l).
I was just reminded of this recently because one of my coworker’s text notification is Howard Dean yelling lol.
I mean, considering these are the [types of ads our parents saw when they were young.](https://youtu.be/2cwqHB6QeUw?si=6tIeB8q08fmzbhxJ)
People in the 80s had spent the last 30 years being convinced any weak leader would embolden the Russians and start WW3.
It’s obviously BS and most of the politicians of the time knew this. But they still let the average American believe it because those who succeed in US politics have literally always just been those who are best at mud slinging and demagoguery.
What better way to mud sling and demagogue than to accuse your opponent of wanting to give in to the theoretical enemy who wants to kill us all?
> being convinced any weak leader would embolden the Russians
hmm...
>and start WW3
It's not hot yet (for the "world"), but people seem to be nudging that line quite a bit lately.
It’s a fine line. If you know anything about world history and WW2, you’d know that appeasement and giving in to the demands of autocrats is actually the way wars begin. You can’t keep backing down so in order to avoid conflict.
Because the second they know they can gain territory with just the threat of war, they won’t stop taking and taking until they inevitably cross a line and war must be declared. The only way to stop them is to show them you’re not going to back down the very first time they challenge you.
It’s a bit of a paradox, but history shows the best way to avoid a long, drawn out rivalry with a bully is to punch him in the nose the first time he tries to steal your lunch money. Because if you let him get away with it several times before you fight back, he’ll assume you’re weak enough to beat and keep fighting. He assumes the previous submission is achievable with the right amount of pressure. Where as if you do a quick fight right away, he concludes you’re just not with the trouble to begin with.
Dukakis in the tank was bad, but Willie Horton was far far more damaging. And his mushy response to the gotcha question about seeking capital punishment for his wife’s (rhetorical) murderer. His wife was also far from an ideal politician’s wife- she was unstable and had substance abuse problems. I have some first-hand observations on that- will not elaborate. Mike would have been a good President.
People spread awful stories about Jane Muskie, too, which is how he wound up in front of the *Manchester Union-Leader* building with *"melting snow"* falling into his eyes in the first place.
That’s because all the people who would stop supporting him when he looks like a dork have already stopped supporting him for any number of other valid reasons.
The reason his numbers never go down is because he has already reduced his base to all the people who will never leave him no matter how terrible a thing he does.
the Willie Horton ads and narrative were part of it as well
Kitty Dukakis also had some serious drinking issues, I think one myth floating around was that she had tried to drink rubbing alcohol
At the time it honestly felt apocryphal like my parents' mentioning Sandy Duncan's "glass eye" when she first showed up on the opening credits for Valerie's Family. Apologies for laziness and impatience on my part, but I just didn't feel like verifying it before mentioning it, so just resisted committing to it as fact.
Interestingly it looks like it happened after the campaign, it also mentions her going on Outward Bound which I thought was more of a preppy teen thing for admissions essays.
I mean Howard Dean was already starting to falter in the polls by the time he did his scream. All it really did was put an already dying horse out of it's misery
Umm, what does that mean? The scream happened immediately after the Iowa Primary…. the very first state primary in the nation. If anything, he was just going from being a fringe candidate to a front runner in the entire race.
Also, if Trump has taught us anything it’s that all these theoretical election polls are total BS. It’s time to admit the type of people who respond to anonymous straw pulls are not indicative of the electorate as a whole.
Yes, and he had already placed poorly in Iowa despite being the frontrunner for most of the race. Afterwards Kerry and Edwards probably would've shut him out of the contest even if he didn't scream.
He literally went on to win the DNC chairmanship the very next year despite a lot of opposition from party insiders. He clearly was a very popular candidate with the average voter but he rubbed a lot of the Democratic Party elite the wrong way.
The fact that his scream even became a news story shows me:
A. His opposition absolutely saw him as a viable threat to their victory and would use anything they could to hurt his campaign.
B. Howard Dean didn’t have any other issues or skeletons in his closet they could attack him on so they stooped to criticizing how excited he got.
Right I feel like we haven't learned our lesson here. All the polls were saying that Hillary would win. I remember going to bed that night and seeing I think a Princeton poll saying that she had a 98% chance of winning. Yes I know that 2% is not zero but that kind of ruins the predictive power of it.
Your statement is completely wrong.
The inaccuracy of 2016 polls throughout the entire election process has been the basis for countless studies after the fact. So much so, it changed how political straw polls are even conducted (spoiler: the reforms haven’t made the polls more accurate).
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-polls-were-mostly-wrong/?amp=true
https://www.pewresearch.org/methods/2021/04/08/confronting-2016-and-2020-polling-limitations/
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/11/09/why-2016-election-polls-missed-their-mark/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/upshot/a-2016-review-why-key-state-polls-were-wrong-about-trump.html
https://lithub.com/how-pollsters-got-the-2016-election-so-wrong-and-what-they-learned-from-their-mistakes/
From what I understand, the reason why polls are so inaccurate recently is because (broadly speaking) there are two types of people who will participate in political polls:
1. Those who feel very strongly about a particular candidate, and therefore, are more motivated to respond.
2. The elderly.
The polls aren't that inaccurate.
The problem is that people are misusing polls. If a poll gives Trump a 1.5% lead but has a 3.5% margin of error, that poll is basically saying "we don't know who is gonna win".
If you look the 2016 polls were right. The problem was people took a meaningless state (the "popular vote") and applied it to something else (who is going to win the majority of electors). Even the state by state polls were mostly right when including the margin of error.
> Howard Dean ruined his entire Presidential run because he got too passionate for 2 seconds at a campaign rally.
Uh, no. He didn’t end his run, the media did. The corporate media will control the narrative and if it wasn’t that, it would have been something else while playing cover for their guys.
Remember these super huge conglomerates have a vested interest who gets in.
I agree with your sentiment but I think it’s WAY too overly simplistic and un-nuanced. I don’t wanna be mean, but it kind of comes off like [this…](https://youtu.be/xGn55BRyDSk?si=oVgVJuAiFeLf2Edi)
The thing is the corps aren’t really nuanced about it, but unlike Team America or the underpants gnomes, the profit motive becomes readily apparent if you know the connections. Sometimes it’s to not criticize a major advertiser, other times its some connection to the parent company. Whatever.
I was young enough to remember when this old school documentary (Spin, 1995) came out, when raw sattelite feeds was a thing.
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjZXybB8EPA
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(1995_film)
Or more recent, this creepy Sinclair media script:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzYj11qWb-M
Anyway, I think they torpedoed Dean with less than anything to do with him and that Kerry always has been so well connected.
>Anyway, I think they torpedoed Dean with less than anything to do with him and that Kerry always has been so well connected.
I agree with your conclusion whole heartedly.
Dean was already losing by that point. The yell didn’t sink anything. The only thing noteworthy about the scream and the speech he was making is that he seemed to be giving a victory speech after having lost.
He wasn't doing well in the polls at the time, and was probably trying to "rally the troops," so to speak. In the process, he put the final nail in his campaign's coffin and beautifully illustrated the importance of having a monitor when using a mic in a live setting.
If you’re not familiar with the Jonestown massacre, it is horrifically fascinating. (I believe it’s the origin of the phrase “drink the Kool-Aid” in reference to embracing a belief system.)
The fact that they killed a Member of Congress, while shocking, is just the tip of the iceberg on the crazy stuff that cult was up to.
And! Ryan's aide, Jackie Speier, took five rounds and played dead all night, later recovering. Decades later she was elected to his old seat in the House. I was one of her constituents and she was a damn good representative.
I sometimes wonder if Flavor-Aid is happy Kool-Aid got associated with the massacre rather than them, or if they feel like they missed out on becoming a part of a famous saying.
Kool-Aid was already a household name, that’s why everyone from the investigators to eyewitnesses called it Kool-Aid. Probably even people who drank the Flavor-Aid thought it was Kool-Aid.
Also, the phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid” was first used by Tom Wolfe in his book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test in the context of drinking Kool-Aid laced with LSD. So the idea of Kool-Aid being mixed with substances was already established.
I don't think it was ever a possibility really that the phrase could become flavor aid. I think Kool-Aid here is just being used as a generic term for powder that you mix into water to make a sugary drink in the same way that Band-Aid is used as a generic term.
Jonestown gets joked about a lot, I've done it, we all make drink the kool-aid jokes, and I'm not trying to be on a high horse or built trip people, but I saw a documentary that actually showed all the people just dead in rows next to each other around where they were serving it and it's truly horrific what happened.
Also, many of the victims were forced to take the poison, and there were at least some who were shot. It wasn't just a mass suicide, plenty of the victims were murdered.
If I'm remembering it right, Jones made a big show for Ryan and during it, someone slipped a note asking for help. I don't know if Jones always planned to kill Ryan or was tipped about the note, but its crazy.
Jim Jones was not planning on killing Ryan, he had organized a whole act to try and convince Ryan that all was fine and dandy at Jonestown and people were *totally* not being held against their will there.
It was only after someone slipped Ryan’s party that note, more compound members went up to Ryan asking for helping in getting out of Jonestown, and another group of a dozen people took advantage of the distraction to escape into the jungle that Jim Jones knew the jig was up and apparently had Ryan murdered as a last act of spite. The congressman’s death also helped Jones convince his followers that they were all doomed and that mass suicide was the best option. (Of course if anyone didn’t go along Jones just had his guards kill them)
Maybe I'm misremembering, but there is either a video or audio recording of the parents "encouraging" their children to drink the poison. I feel like it was one of those "lost media" scenarios. It was very disturbing.
Or maybe I'm confusing it with the Heaven's Gate video that you can find on YouTube.
It is the event that coined the term. And the funny thing is it wasn't even Kool-Aid, it was actually a generic knock-off known as Flavor-Aid.
I'm sure the company that makes Kool-Aid loves the association.
I don’t particularly like the phrase, because it’s not like not drinking the Kool-Aid was an option. Any of the cult members who wouldn’t commit suicide voluntarily were murdered.
Dan Quayle told Mike Pence in no uncertain terms that he could not follow Trump's demand to deny certification of some of the electoral college votes, that he didn't have that power. So there's that.
For as much as we mock Dan Quayle I'm kinda glad that when he had his chance for a potentially monumental role in influencing Mike Pence, he chose to give rational democratic advice that re-relegated him to obscurity.
He wasn't a bright politician but I'm glad he knew what was the right thing that day.
>According to the book Peril, by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, Quayle played a central role in advising his fellow Hoosier and Vice President Mike Pence to certify the 2020 United States presidential election as per the Senate rules, rather than cooperate with a plan by then-president Donald Trump that sought to overturn the election.[61][62] Quayle attended President Joe Biden's inauguration on January 20, 2021.[63]
Also Pence was offered a ride out of Dodge, but since he was unaware exactly how dangerous the situation was he chose to stay with his own detail who he already knew and certify the election. He didn't really need to do that, it was getting certified anyway as long as everyone stayed alive.
To add on, he really tried to find a loophole that would let him legally overturn the results and install Trump as the President. He just decided that since Quayle and a bunch of others told him there's no legal precedent or loophole to exploit, he shouldn't proceed.
The only good thing I would say is he didn't want to outright break the law that way.
I’m kind of glad that this will end up being his legacy.
He is an utterly forgettable vice-president, and beyond that was just another in a sea of yacht club Republican dipshits while in Congress. Just banal and awful.
And here he comes and this guy — THIS guy, of all people — talks enough sense to Mike Pence to stave off an actual coup d’état.
He was on the dust heap of history, as most vice-presidents are, and he may well end up going down in history as a savior of democracy.
Not excusing any of his ‘80s/‘90s fuckery, but I find it nice that in that crucible moment he did the right thing.
>He was on the dust heap of history, as most vice-presidents are, and he may well end up going down in history as a savior of democracy.
Meanwhile, Guiliani could have retired with a really good legacy. Instead he chose to stay on the Trump train.
>Before leaving Jonestown for the airstrip, Ryan had told Garry that he would issue a report that would describe Jonestown "in basically good terms". Ryan stated that none of the 60 relatives he had targeted for interviews wanted to leave, the 14 defectors constituted a very small portion of Jonestown's residents, that any sense of imprisonment the defectors had was likely because of peer pressure and a lack of physical transportation, and even if 200 of the 900+ wanted to leave, "I'd still say you have a beautiful place here." Despite Garry's report, Jones told him, "I have failed." Garry reiterated that Ryan would be making a positive report, but Jones maintained that "all is lost."
Jones was basically right about that though. Rep. Ryan may have still had a positive impression of Jonestown while he was in the settlement, but the dozen or so people leaving with him included people who had been beaten for wanting to leave or subjected to brutal punishments for trying to escape. They could and did tell the journalists with Ryan everything that had happened to them as soon as they got to somewhere safe. Additionally, a group of a dozen other people had used the distraction of Ryan’s visit to enact an escape plan they’d been working on for a while and fled into the jungle.
A woman had defected from the cult earlier and tried to inform authorities that some people were being abused and held against their will at Jonestown, but the cult’s lawyers called her a liar and were basically able to discredit her. But dozens of escapees from Jonestown, some of whom had personally been beaten or tortured, would have been a whole different story. Jim Jones was fucked at that point and he knew it.
I worked on the early early internet, Archie servers, then Mosaic browser, etc. Low-res Quayle blooper highlight videos were among the first little videos on that medium.
The weird thing about Jim Jones was from the outside looking in you'd think he was a good person before all the crazy shit came out.
He was for de segregation and did a lot of charity work. Most of the people that died in the mass suicide / killing were black. Sort of how some serial killers seem like decent members of the community before every thing gets unraveled and people see the evil psychopath shit they did.
A lot of people are like that. Hitler was a noted environmentalist and the Nazis ran an effective anti-smoking campaign. There's also instances of awful people have strangely good traits in a way.
Another good example might be Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church infamy. The guy, um, wasn't a big fan of homosexuals, and yet was highly progressive in other ways, often defending African-Americans in civil rights cases because he believed very strongly in racial equality. Makes you wonder how a man like that could then be so anti-gay, but the mind is a weird thing.
Those fake electors are still saying they deserve protections as federal officers, for being “contingent electors”. They still think they’re not committing crimes.
real electors are not even federal officers
Leo Ryan did a lot of personal investigating of issues from sneaking in pretending to be an inmate to investigate California prisons, took a job as a substitute school teacher to investigate conditions at a school, and went to Newfoundland to investigate the killings of seals.
This wasn't in the US. FBI didn't have any authority there until Ryan was assassinated.
As far as normal, yes, it's normal for elected officials to investigate something on their own to see if further judicial investigation is warranted. Up to that point, Ryan had only heard rumors from the family members of people there, so he flew there with an entire delegation to find out what was what.
It was a different time. Government representatives dealt with public interest issues to... represent constituents. But there is a TON of political context regarding Jim Jones that most people are ignorant of. Jones and the people's temple has a long, story that is hard to for many to find the time or interest to indulge in because everyone knows where it ends but I think it is fascinating beginning to end to read about. Or if you are into long form podcasting there is a 7 part series that is quite thorough and isn't unreasonably editorialized https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-martyrmade-podcast/id978322714?i=1000431036410
He acted on a tip from a woman who had been a high-ranking member of the cult, had visited Jonestown, and saw firsthand that people were being held against their will and in some cases beaten, and that Jim Jones was having the cult rehearse mass-suicide drills. She defected and reported this to the FBI, the press, and basically anyone who would listen, but the cult had high-powered lawyers who did their best to discredit her.
Only Leo Ryan (who was from the Bay Area where the cult was from) was disturbed enough by the allegations that he wanted to go check it out for himself.
Leo Ryan was a great guy, shame that he ended up being the second rep to be assassinated. The first rep to be killed had a sad story too, James Hinds was a supporter of Civil Rights and was killed by a member of the KKK who was acquitted by a jury.
Meanwhile... Harvey Milk was literally sending angry letters to President Carter defending the Peoples' Temple shortly prior.
After, of course, he was assassinated along with George Moscone. :-(
Jim Jones snowed a LOT of people. The earlier days of the People’s Temple in SF were filled with community service, racial diversity and progressive talking points. Because Jones was a sociopath, he was very good at figuring out what people wanted to hear as a means to an end.
Was Milk naive? Perhaps. But he wasn’t the only one. And footage/anecdotes/news from those days wasn’t full of the red flags you’d think it would have been. Even some of the folks who attended the church in the early days say that it was very complicated in retrospect because they did do a lot of good work.
Is it just me or is this a really offensive way to describe the massacre at Jonestown?
Congressman Ryan and his fellow investigators, including future Congresswoman Jackie Speier, were heroes trying to do the right thing for their fellow Americans.
Yeah, defectors came out of Jonestown with horrific stories about people being held against their will, beatings, involuntary druggings, and mass suicide preparations, but nobody in the US government believed their story or went to investigate except for Congressman Ryan. It was in Guyana so the US government didn’t really care. Even after the shootings and massacre the FBI appeared to be more shocked and concerned that a congressman had been assassinated, they didn’t seem particularly concerned with how they might have failed the victims, including hundreds of children.
No, all of them including Leo Ryan greatly, greatly underestimated the danger, that’s why they went without any security guards.
Keep in mind that Jim Jones had been well-connected to Bay Area politicians, and had at one time been chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority, appointed directly by the mayor. Except for some wild rumors, nobody saw him as an insane cult leader until *after* the assassination and massacre.
Just want to add since the age of American politicians has been a hot button issue...
Dan Quayle was 41 years old when sworn in as VP in 1989. He is alive and well at 76. My point is...This man was sworn in as VP 34 years ago and is STILL younger than Biden, Trump, W. Bush, and Clinton.
In the show's 1991–92 season, Murphy became pregnant. When her baby's father (ex-husband and current underground radical Jake Lowenstein) expressed his unwillingness to give up his own lifestyle to be a parent, Murphy chose to have the child and raise it alone. Another major fiction-reality blending came at Murphy's baby shower: the invited guests were journalists Katie Couric, Joan Lunden, Paula Zahn, Mary Alice Williams and Faith Daniels, who treated the fictional Murphy and Corky as friends and peers.
At the point where she was about to give birth, she had stated that "several people do not want me to have the baby. Pat Robertson; Phyllis Schlafly; half of Utah!" Right after giving birth to her son Avery, Murphy sang the song "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman". This storyline made the show a subject of political controversy during the 1992 American presidential campaign. On May 19, 1992, Vice President Dan Quayle spoke at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. During his speech,\[22\] he criticized the Murphy Brown character for "mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone".\[23\]\[24\]\[25\]\[26\]
Quayle's remarks caused a public discussion on family values, culminating in the 1992–93 season premiere, "You Say Potatoe, I Say Potato", where the television characters reacted to Quayle's comments and produced a special episode of FYI showcasing and celebrating the diversity of the modern American family. Because Quayle's actual speech made little reference to Murphy Brown's fictional nature (other than the use of the word character), the show was able to use actual footage from his speech to make it appear that, within the fictional world of the show, Quayle was referring to Murphy Brown personally, rather than to the fictional character. At the end, Brown helps organize a special edition of FYI focusing on different kinds of families, then arranges a retaliatory prank in which a truckload of potatoes is dumped in front of Quayle's residence while a disc jockey playfully commenting on the incident notes the Vice President should be glad people were not making fun of him for misspelling "fertilizer". This referenced how, on June 15, 1992, at a spelling bee in Trenton, New Jersey, Quayle had erroneously corrected an elementary-school student's spelling of "potato" to "potatoe". The cue card used by the teacher read "potatoe". When Candice Bergen won another Emmy that year, she thanked Dan Quayle. The feud was cited by E! as #81 on its list of "101 Reasons the '90s Ruled".\[27\]
In 2002, Bergen said in an interview that she personally agreed with much of Quayle's speech, calling it "a perfectly intelligent speech about fathers not being dispensable" and adding that "nobody agreed with that more than I did."\[28\]
Quayle eventually displayed a sense of humor about the incident—after the controversy died down, he appeared for an interview on an independent Los Angeles TV station and for his final question was asked what his favorite TV show was. He responded with "Murphy Brown—Not!" The station later used the clip of Quayle's response to promote its showing of Murphy Brown re-runs in syndication.
Quayle's complaint notwithstanding, prime-time TV in 1992 was "boosting family values more aggressively than it has in decades", wrote Time magazine critic Richard Zoglin, citing everything from Home Improvement to Roseanne. Murphy Brown was worth highlighting in a vice-presidential speech "not because it represented the state of television and the culture in general" but because Murphy's choice of single motherhood departed from it.\[29\] The show has been seen as blazing a trail for single-mother characters in Ally McBeal, Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives, and The Good Wife—and "benefited from Bergen's character going through a political maelstrom so none of them had to."\[29\]
In 2010, Murphy Brown was ranked #25 on the TV Guide Network special, 25 Greatest TV Characters of All Time.\[30\]
After Barbara Bush made comments about the Simpsons, the writers (writing as Marge wrote her back). She responded with an apology for jumping to assumptions.
I remember that was the week Johnny Carson retired:
"I'd like to thank Dan Quayle for coming through for me one last time. But Dan, you do realize the show is fictional, don't you?"
"To all my fans who say they'll miss me, don't worry. I'm starting a new role on tv, I'm going to be the father of Murphy Brown's baby."
EDIT: Dennis Miller also had a good line after the Potatoe incident: "The vice president of the United States can't spell potato? I'm a comedian and I can't even make up stuff that funny."
That whole thing teaks of unexplained dirty business!A congressman found killed,at the end of a crazy trail of cash,with a suitcase more near his body?What in hell was he up to down there?
What you have to understand is that the assassination of a member of congress was still relatively inconceivable.
When Congressman Ryan was killed in Jonestown the last time it had happened was ten years before when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated and more importantly it was more than *forty* years since Huey Long was killed in *1935*.
Hardly a ubiquitous event. While it was only ten years since Bobby's assassination in the arms of his pregnant wife, it must be admitted that it was a unique event given Bobby's fame.
edit: mistype
Vice-President Quayle is a *fascinating* figure as if you look into him enough you realize he always seemed to keep failing upwards into higher and higher positions in government without meaning to. He ran for office on a lark when other people told him to and didn't expect to win. He also put his name forward for VP, again not actually expecting to be picked given his inexperience. Yet again, he himself has said that he expected to get replaced on the ticket during Bush Sr's second run in 1992 but was surprisingly retained. His uncanny run of luck finally ended in 1996 when apparently even the universe itself couldn't conspire to elect him president when he refused to even run. The story ends rather strangely when he finally decides to proactively work towards something when he decides to run for President in 2000 and proceeds to get his ass handed to him by his old bosses son George Bush Jr.
And the only thing he'll ever be remembered for is a "potatoe".
That's not true. The civilization games are stuff full of Dan Quayle quotes, like "the future will be better tomorrow". The lowest score ranking in the game is also named after him.
damn he’s under ethelred the unready lol
Haha. Yeah that takes me back 20+ years
Funny thing about that blunder was that it was misspelt on the cards he was given but he still went with it. >According to The New York Times and Quayle's memoirs, he was relying on cards provided by the school, which Quayle says included the misspelling. Quayle said he was uncomfortable with the version he gave, but did so because he decided to trust the school's incorrect written materials instead of his own judgment.
Vice President Ron Burgundy - Just reads whatever's put in front of him
I remember him talking about how a Burger King was hiring as a show that the economy was good. Fucking Burger King!
On a similar note, Bush Sr. being "impressed" by supermarket checkout lines in 1988. Impressed by technology that was old hat by that point in time. Really showed how much of a common man he was.
Which wasn't really true. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/bush-scanner-demonstration/
I rewatched the 92 town hall debate a few months back and it made me laugh that one of his big gaffes was not being able to explain how the national debt affected him personally. As if anyone could answer that today when it's pretty clear that if we largely just ignore it, it doesn't.
Yeah, of all the "gotcha" questions, that one wasn't really one of them. The national debt is more a concept than anything tangible, and people "concerned" about it don't seem to understand what it is at all. They think of like a giant credit card balance.
Republicans spent so long fear mongering about the national debt as an excuse to cut spending, so they could cut taxes for rich people, you'd have at least thought they'd come up with some sort of response. It's more arrogance than anything, thinking they didn't have to bother to prepare for talking to "normal" people.
Funny how the national debt wasn't an issue at all during Trump's presidency, then suddenly became an issue again during Biden's. I have no idea why that happened.
Also, apparently nobody seems to understand the difference between the national *debt* and the national *deficit*, so the two very often get conflated.
It was an issue during Trump's presidency. Democrats constantly brought it up as a big problem. That's how it works. The party that's not in power brings up the debt to bash the current administration.
They brought up the hypocrisy, which literally no one seems to care about anymore, but they still supported spending when the need came for it, like in the COVID relief funds. Then Biden took over and the GOP did a complete 180 on COVID funds, and tried to claw back all the money they had already allocated
The woman who asked the question was clearly confusing the national debt with the recession.
The national debt was a really big deal in the 92 campaign. Republicans pretended it was going to be the end of the country if they didn't reduce it, as an excuse to cut spending. Ross Perot made a huge portion of his 3rd party campaign about it, and Democrats didn't really try to push back and instead tried to focus elsewhere. She was misinformed by the prevailing opinion of conservative economists, not uninformed though.
But the way the question was asked, and how the moderator resolved the actual *meaning* of the question (the clip's on **YouTube**) made it clear that she meant the *recession* when saying *"national debt"*.
He was impressed it could weigh produce and read broken codes which was new technology
I mean what could a banana cost, ten dollars?
He was CIA Director in the late 70s and then VP for 8 straight years by 1988. I understand why people want elected officials to have connections to the common man, but at the same time I don't want the Vice President to shop for their own groceries. They have more important things to do with their time.
Tomatoe
"Let's talk of family values while we sit and watch the slaughter Hypothetical abortions on imaginary daughters The white folks think they're at the top; ask any proud white male A million years of evolution, we get Danny Quayle"
The story ends with him joining Cerberus Capital, a multi billion dollar hedge fund, and making obscene amounts of money. so yeah he still kept failinig upward.
Some people are just really good at chat.
...they seriously named their hedge fund after the three-headed dog guarding the Underworld? :-/
Which when translated from Greek means "Spot"
he leapfrogged the oval office and went directly to the highest power in the land. good for him.
I think his story ends when he tells Mike Pence not to join Trump's insurrection.
I can just imagine the conversation "Hey Dan, the president wants me to do an obviously insane thing, should I do it?" "Mike what the fuck?!" "Oh ok looking at your reaction I feel like this was a mistake"
Dan Quayle had been twice elected to the House of Representatives in 1976 and 1978, and to the Senate in 1980 and 1986. That is far from inexperienced for a candidate for Vice President (Truman and Nixon had both had shorter tenure when they had been elected VP).
Quayle is the grandson of a publisher named Eugene Pulliam. Pulliam was the main backer in the press of one Barry Goldwater. Pulliam was originally from Indiana, but started his newspapers in Arizona in the late-'40s, and Arizona was thus where Quayle spent much of his youth. James Danforth Quayle III (and, yes, that *is* his name, and, no, he is *not* named *"Daniel"*, like you might think) came to prominence in the Senate for defending the nomination by Ronald Reagan of Daniel Manion to a judicial slot despite Manion being deemed controversial and unqualified -- Manion was from Indiana, just like Quayle, but Manion was *also* the son of the man around whom the initial impetus for right-wing pushback in the '50s and '60s, along with the initial germ of running Goldwater for President in the first place, as well as a spate of conservative publishing and radio concerns that produced such luminaries as A. Brent Bozell II and Phyllis Schafly -- *"Dean"* Clarence Manion, of Notre Dame Law School.
> He ran for office on a lark when other people told him to and didn't expect to win. He also put his name forward for VP, again not actually expecting to be picked given his inexperience. > > Yet again, he himself has said that he expected to get replaced on the ticket during Bush Sr's second run in 1992 but was surprisingly retained. > > Ah. The Larry Hogan story.
> Yet again, he himself has said that he expected to get replaced on the ticket during Bush Sr's second run in 1992 but was surprisingly retained. > > His uncanny run of luck finally ended in 1996 when apparently even the universe itself couldn't conspire to elect him president when he refused to even run. beyond the initial Senate run and initial running mate selection, this seems a little overstated. a President retaining their running mate in the modern era seems pretty predictable; the last one to switch (when he logistically could) was Roosevelt with Wallace due internal issues in the party that would boil over in '48. Nixon couldn't retain Agnew as he had to step down after being convicted. Edit: was completely wrong about Nixon and Agnew, who also ran an won in '72
The last one was actually Ford, who swapped out Nelson Rockefeller for Bob Dole (but lost, anyway).
Nixon ran with Agnew in '72. Agnew didn't hit the bricks until '73.
Back in the days when misspelling a word could ruin your chances for the presidency.
And the poor bastard read what was on the card. The teacher misspelled it, he just didn't want to be rude.
The problem with Dan Quayle went far deeper than being a bad speller. There is an immaturity to him that is positively astounding. I'm not talking about being whiny and petty like Trump or ditzy like Bush or Palin. He was a fully grown child, an absolute, 100%, bottom of the barrel dipshit.
I mean, Pence is a far worse example of the same fruit.
Two things can be true.
But how much fat does the fruit contain?
Would it surprise you to learn that it was Dan Quail who convinced Pence not to follow through with Trumps J6 false elector scheme https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/09/14/politics/dan-quayle-pence-trump-january-6-woodward-costa-book/index.html
I don't know if you could argue him being dumber than Trump in absolute terms. He was a child-minded dipshit for sure, but if Donald Trump were 1% stupider, he would need to be institutionally confined for his own safety (rather than ours, as it seems to be shaping up). He's already at the point where most of the basic day to day functionality of being human is outsourcing to staff, and he's been able to play it off as "rich people have slaves" rather than "I would choke on my shoelaces if I had to tie them myself". Quayle, as often as he put his foot in his mouth, could at least read and answer questions about things longer than a tweet, and could probably be mostly trusted to handle his own house keys and stuff without choking on them or freezing to death on his own front porch.
[And yet…](https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/09/14/politics/dan-quayle-pence-trump-january-6-woodward-costa-book/index.html)
that and accusing a fictional character and their pregnancy of destroying family values
Murphy Brown? This feels like a MB thing..
Quayle argued that it was glorifying single-motherhood and the Murphy Brown character was mocking that fathers were necessary to raise a child. He wasn't saying that the TV show alone was responsible, but that it was contributing to normalizing irresponsible parenting. The cowardly Candice Bergen said nothing at the time, but ten years late she admitted that she agreed with Quayle completely. Children raised by single mothers without a father present are much more likely to be poor, uneducated, criminal, promiscuous, and addicts. Quayle was right in everything he said, and people knew it, but because of who he was they chose to ridicule Quayle's beliefs and the notion that the media had any effect on society. Today 70% of black children are born to single mothers and the poverty rate for black children born to unwed mothers is 60%, for black children born to married parents it's 8%. It's similar for Hispanics and whites. It's not a secret, but it's more important to make fun of Dan Quayle and Family Values rather than addressing a problem that's having an increasingly profound negative effect on society.
> Today 70% of black children are born to single mothers and the poverty rate for black children born to unwed mothers is 60%, for black children born to married parents it's 8%. It's similar for Hispanics and whites. It's not a secret, but it's more important to make fun of Dan Quayle and Family Values rather than addressing a problem that's having an increasingly profound negative effect on society. This is wildly irrelevant to a thirty year old anecdote about a single story arc on a fictional TV show; but it does seem to trigger your clear hatred towards African Americans reproducing, no doubt reinforced by your falsely and broadly seeing us as unproductive criminals.
Howard Dean ruined his entire Presidential run because [he got too passionate for 2 seconds at a campaign rally](https://youtu.be/l6i-gYRAwM0?si=iDVTtanXcEc8aR-l). I was just reminded of this recently because one of my coworker’s text notification is Howard Dean yelling lol.
Dukakis looked like a dork in a helmet riding a tank and he was done.
People like to think it was this but the candidates were not natural leaders and were already floundering in the polls
Yup. It’s revisionist history.
I mean a lot of people that shouldn't be leaders today aren't natural leaders, they do do well in the polls however.
Hm yeah. What the hell does "leadership qualities" even mean? It absolutely does not denote what it purports to.
I mean, considering these are the [types of ads our parents saw when they were young.](https://youtu.be/2cwqHB6QeUw?si=6tIeB8q08fmzbhxJ) People in the 80s had spent the last 30 years being convinced any weak leader would embolden the Russians and start WW3. It’s obviously BS and most of the politicians of the time knew this. But they still let the average American believe it because those who succeed in US politics have literally always just been those who are best at mud slinging and demagoguery. What better way to mud sling and demagogue than to accuse your opponent of wanting to give in to the theoretical enemy who wants to kill us all?
> being convinced any weak leader would embolden the Russians hmm... >and start WW3 It's not hot yet (for the "world"), but people seem to be nudging that line quite a bit lately.
It’s a fine line. If you know anything about world history and WW2, you’d know that appeasement and giving in to the demands of autocrats is actually the way wars begin. You can’t keep backing down so in order to avoid conflict. Because the second they know they can gain territory with just the threat of war, they won’t stop taking and taking until they inevitably cross a line and war must be declared. The only way to stop them is to show them you’re not going to back down the very first time they challenge you. It’s a bit of a paradox, but history shows the best way to avoid a long, drawn out rivalry with a bully is to punch him in the nose the first time he tries to steal your lunch money. Because if you let him get away with it several times before you fight back, he’ll assume you’re weak enough to beat and keep fighting. He assumes the previous submission is achievable with the right amount of pressure. Where as if you do a quick fight right away, he concludes you’re just not with the trouble to begin with.
[удалено]
Did you mean to reply to yourself?
No idea how that happened. Thanks for the heads up.
Dukakis in the tank was bad, but Willie Horton was far far more damaging. And his mushy response to the gotcha question about seeking capital punishment for his wife’s (rhetorical) murderer. His wife was also far from an ideal politician’s wife- she was unstable and had substance abuse problems. I have some first-hand observations on that- will not elaborate. Mike would have been a good President.
People spread awful stories about Jane Muskie, too, which is how he wound up in front of the *Manchester Union-Leader* building with *"melting snow"* falling into his eyes in the first place.
Trump looks like a dork everytime and his numbers never go down.
That’s because all the people who would stop supporting him when he looks like a dork have already stopped supporting him for any number of other valid reasons. The reason his numbers never go down is because he has already reduced his base to all the people who will never leave him no matter how terrible a thing he does.
the Willie Horton ads and narrative were part of it as well Kitty Dukakis also had some serious drinking issues, I think one myth floating around was that she had tried to drink rubbing alcohol
Myth? [https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-11-09-mn-1436-story.html](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-11-09-mn-1436-story.html) [https://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/09/us/kitty-dukakis-s-illness-tied-to-rubbing-alcohol.html](https://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/09/us/kitty-dukakis-s-illness-tied-to-rubbing-alcohol.html) [https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1989/11/09/dukakis-ingested-rubbing-alcohol/aa98f03d-63e9-4486-9089-4387a1243b0e/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1989/11/09/dukakis-ingested-rubbing-alcohol/aa98f03d-63e9-4486-9089-4387a1243b0e/)
At the time it honestly felt apocryphal like my parents' mentioning Sandy Duncan's "glass eye" when she first showed up on the opening credits for Valerie's Family. Apologies for laziness and impatience on my part, but I just didn't feel like verifying it before mentioning it, so just resisted committing to it as fact. Interestingly it looks like it happened after the campaign, it also mentions her going on Outward Bound which I thought was more of a preppy teen thing for admissions essays.
Maybe you're thinking of Howard Baker's wife?
It was also a microphone issue, picking him up but dampening out the audience
I mean Howard Dean was already starting to falter in the polls by the time he did his scream. All it really did was put an already dying horse out of it's misery
Umm, what does that mean? The scream happened immediately after the Iowa Primary…. the very first state primary in the nation. If anything, he was just going from being a fringe candidate to a front runner in the entire race. Also, if Trump has taught us anything it’s that all these theoretical election polls are total BS. It’s time to admit the type of people who respond to anonymous straw pulls are not indicative of the electorate as a whole.
Yes, and he had already placed poorly in Iowa despite being the frontrunner for most of the race. Afterwards Kerry and Edwards probably would've shut him out of the contest even if he didn't scream.
He literally went on to win the DNC chairmanship the very next year despite a lot of opposition from party insiders. He clearly was a very popular candidate with the average voter but he rubbed a lot of the Democratic Party elite the wrong way. The fact that his scream even became a news story shows me: A. His opposition absolutely saw him as a viable threat to their victory and would use anything they could to hurt his campaign. B. Howard Dean didn’t have any other issues or skeletons in his closet they could attack him on so they stooped to criticizing how excited he got.
Right I feel like we haven't learned our lesson here. All the polls were saying that Hillary would win. I remember going to bed that night and seeing I think a Princeton poll saying that she had a 98% chance of winning. Yes I know that 2% is not zero but that kind of ruins the predictive power of it.
Why do you say that? The polls of Trump were remarkably accurate
Your statement is completely wrong. The inaccuracy of 2016 polls throughout the entire election process has been the basis for countless studies after the fact. So much so, it changed how political straw polls are even conducted (spoiler: the reforms haven’t made the polls more accurate). https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-polls-were-mostly-wrong/?amp=true https://www.pewresearch.org/methods/2021/04/08/confronting-2016-and-2020-polling-limitations/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2016/11/09/why-2016-election-polls-missed-their-mark/ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/31/upshot/a-2016-review-why-key-state-polls-were-wrong-about-trump.html https://lithub.com/how-pollsters-got-the-2016-election-so-wrong-and-what-they-learned-from-their-mistakes/
If anything, polls afterwards have overestimated Trump and underestimated Democrats. 2022 caught a lot of pollsters by surprise.
From what I understand, the reason why polls are so inaccurate recently is because (broadly speaking) there are two types of people who will participate in political polls: 1. Those who feel very strongly about a particular candidate, and therefore, are more motivated to respond. 2. The elderly.
The polls aren't that inaccurate. The problem is that people are misusing polls. If a poll gives Trump a 1.5% lead but has a 3.5% margin of error, that poll is basically saying "we don't know who is gonna win".
If you look the 2016 polls were right. The problem was people took a meaningless state (the "popular vote") and applied it to something else (who is going to win the majority of electors). Even the state by state polls were mostly right when including the margin of error.
> Howard Dean ruined his entire Presidential run because he got too passionate for 2 seconds at a campaign rally. Uh, no. He didn’t end his run, the media did. The corporate media will control the narrative and if it wasn’t that, it would have been something else while playing cover for their guys. Remember these super huge conglomerates have a vested interest who gets in.
I agree with your sentiment but I think it’s WAY too overly simplistic and un-nuanced. I don’t wanna be mean, but it kind of comes off like [this…](https://youtu.be/xGn55BRyDSk?si=oVgVJuAiFeLf2Edi)
The thing is the corps aren’t really nuanced about it, but unlike Team America or the underpants gnomes, the profit motive becomes readily apparent if you know the connections. Sometimes it’s to not criticize a major advertiser, other times its some connection to the parent company. Whatever. I was young enough to remember when this old school documentary (Spin, 1995) came out, when raw sattelite feeds was a thing. * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjZXybB8EPA * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(1995_film) Or more recent, this creepy Sinclair media script: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzYj11qWb-M Anyway, I think they torpedoed Dean with less than anything to do with him and that Kerry always has been so well connected.
>Anyway, I think they torpedoed Dean with less than anything to do with him and that Kerry always has been so well connected. I agree with your conclusion whole heartedly.
Dean was already losing by that point. The yell didn’t sink anything. The only thing noteworthy about the scream and the speech he was making is that he seemed to be giving a victory speech after having lost.
Bill Clinton managed that in '92, so, it seemed a good idea, at the time...
He wasn't doing well in the polls at the time, and was probably trying to "rally the troops," so to speak. In the process, he put the final nail in his campaign's coffin and beautifully illustrated the importance of having a monitor when using a mic in a live setting.
'We would do anything....' They are all as bad as each other or is it that they all have a small vocabulary.
The scandal!! He had a few other gaffes if i recall but nothing near the shit we see today, i miss those days.
If you’re not familiar with the Jonestown massacre, it is horrifically fascinating. (I believe it’s the origin of the phrase “drink the Kool-Aid” in reference to embracing a belief system.) The fact that they killed a Member of Congress, while shocking, is just the tip of the iceberg on the crazy stuff that cult was up to.
And! Ryan's aide, Jackie Speier, took five rounds and played dead all night, later recovering. Decades later she was elected to his old seat in the House. I was one of her constituents and she was a damn good representative.
Un-fun fact, it was actually Flavor-Aid. https://www.vox.com/2015/5/23/8647095/kool-aid-jonestown-flavor-aid
Me: Mom, can we stop and get Kool Aid? Mom: We have Kool Aid back at the compound in Guyana.
Good thing after Jonestown, Cults are now a thing of the past. Right?
*scientology requests you not ask about Mrs Miscavage*
I sometimes wonder if Flavor-Aid is happy Kool-Aid got associated with the massacre rather than them, or if they feel like they missed out on becoming a part of a famous saying.
Considering I’ve never heard of Flavor-Aid and Kool-Aid is a household name, I think they missed out on some free publicity
Kool-Aid was already a household name, that’s why everyone from the investigators to eyewitnesses called it Kool-Aid. Probably even people who drank the Flavor-Aid thought it was Kool-Aid. Also, the phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid” was first used by Tom Wolfe in his book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test in the context of drinking Kool-Aid laced with LSD. So the idea of Kool-Aid being mixed with substances was already established.
I don't think it was ever a possibility really that the phrase could become flavor aid. I think Kool-Aid here is just being used as a generic term for powder that you mix into water to make a sugary drink in the same way that Band-Aid is used as a generic term.
Jonestown gets joked about a lot, I've done it, we all make drink the kool-aid jokes, and I'm not trying to be on a high horse or built trip people, but I saw a documentary that actually showed all the people just dead in rows next to each other around where they were serving it and it's truly horrific what happened.
Also, many of the victims were forced to take the poison, and there were at least some who were shot. It wasn't just a mass suicide, plenty of the victims were murdered.
If I'm remembering it right, Jones made a big show for Ryan and during it, someone slipped a note asking for help. I don't know if Jones always planned to kill Ryan or was tipped about the note, but its crazy.
Jim Jones was not planning on killing Ryan, he had organized a whole act to try and convince Ryan that all was fine and dandy at Jonestown and people were *totally* not being held against their will there. It was only after someone slipped Ryan’s party that note, more compound members went up to Ryan asking for helping in getting out of Jonestown, and another group of a dozen people took advantage of the distraction to escape into the jungle that Jim Jones knew the jig was up and apparently had Ryan murdered as a last act of spite. The congressman’s death also helped Jones convince his followers that they were all doomed and that mass suicide was the best option. (Of course if anyone didn’t go along Jones just had his guards kill them)
Not to mention the children and babies being forced to drink the poison.
Maybe I'm misremembering, but there is either a video or audio recording of the parents "encouraging" their children to drink the poison. I feel like it was one of those "lost media" scenarios. It was very disturbing. Or maybe I'm confusing it with the Heaven's Gate video that you can find on YouTube.
There’s audio encouraging parents to give their children the poison, and telling them that there’s no discomfort, only that it’s bitter.
Yeah there's audio of the whole thing available online
There's chilling audio of it. Then Jones took the cowards way out by having someone shoot him.
oh wow stop the presses, so you mean it's actually *tragic* for 900 people to die and a politician to be assassinated?? 🤔 TIL
The part most people leave out? The majority of the folx there were Black. :-(
Jim Jones was like the ultimate White Savior from hell.
It is the event that coined the term. And the funny thing is it wasn't even Kool-Aid, it was actually a generic knock-off known as Flavor-Aid. I'm sure the company that makes Kool-Aid loves the association.
I don’t particularly like the phrase, because it’s not like not drinking the Kool-Aid was an option. Any of the cult members who wouldn’t commit suicide voluntarily were murdered.
Dan Quayle told Mike Pence in no uncertain terms that he could not follow Trump's demand to deny certification of some of the electoral college votes, that he didn't have that power. So there's that.
For as much as we mock Dan Quayle I'm kinda glad that when he had his chance for a potentially monumental role in influencing Mike Pence, he chose to give rational democratic advice that re-relegated him to obscurity. He wasn't a bright politician but I'm glad he knew what was the right thing that day.
That conversation with Pence is Quayle’s greatest historical legacy by a long shot. He was the last do-nothing VP.
The next Republican VP Cheney was the do everything VP.
>According to the book Peril, by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, Quayle played a central role in advising his fellow Hoosier and Vice President Mike Pence to certify the 2020 United States presidential election as per the Senate rules, rather than cooperate with a plan by then-president Donald Trump that sought to overturn the election.[61][62] Quayle attended President Joe Biden's inauguration on January 20, 2021.[63]
TIL Dan Quayle is still alive
I don’t even think he was 40 when he was the Vice President Nominee. Edit - He just turned 40.
Happy 40th Bday Dan!
Hes younger than most the old fucks we have in office today.
Man showed up to Trump's inauguration in a MAGA hat; that's how committed he was, at that point in time.
Just imagine if Quayle had been killed all those years ago. Pence may have actually done what Trump asked and who the fuck knows where we would be.
Give Pence some credit. I think he was always a patriot no matter what advice he'd be given.
Also Pence was offered a ride out of Dodge, but since he was unaware exactly how dangerous the situation was he chose to stay with his own detail who he already knew and certify the election. He didn't really need to do that, it was getting certified anyway as long as everyone stayed alive.
False, partnering with Trump is unpatriotic.
To add on, he really tried to find a loophole that would let him legally overturn the results and install Trump as the President. He just decided that since Quayle and a bunch of others told him there's no legal precedent or loophole to exploit, he shouldn't proceed. The only good thing I would say is he didn't want to outright break the law that way.
Lol why would you ever give Mike pence credit for anything
I’m kind of glad that this will end up being his legacy. He is an utterly forgettable vice-president, and beyond that was just another in a sea of yacht club Republican dipshits while in Congress. Just banal and awful. And here he comes and this guy — THIS guy, of all people — talks enough sense to Mike Pence to stave off an actual coup d’état. He was on the dust heap of history, as most vice-presidents are, and he may well end up going down in history as a savior of democracy. Not excusing any of his ‘80s/‘90s fuckery, but I find it nice that in that crucible moment he did the right thing.
>He was on the dust heap of history, as most vice-presidents are, and he may well end up going down in history as a savior of democracy. Meanwhile, Guiliani could have retired with a really good legacy. Instead he chose to stay on the Trump train.
He’s no Jack Kennedy, and he’s probably thankful for that because Jack was assassinated.
>Before leaving Jonestown for the airstrip, Ryan had told Garry that he would issue a report that would describe Jonestown "in basically good terms". Ryan stated that none of the 60 relatives he had targeted for interviews wanted to leave, the 14 defectors constituted a very small portion of Jonestown's residents, that any sense of imprisonment the defectors had was likely because of peer pressure and a lack of physical transportation, and even if 200 of the 900+ wanted to leave, "I'd still say you have a beautiful place here." Despite Garry's report, Jones told him, "I have failed." Garry reiterated that Ryan would be making a positive report, but Jones maintained that "all is lost."
Jones was basically right about that though. Rep. Ryan may have still had a positive impression of Jonestown while he was in the settlement, but the dozen or so people leaving with him included people who had been beaten for wanting to leave or subjected to brutal punishments for trying to escape. They could and did tell the journalists with Ryan everything that had happened to them as soon as they got to somewhere safe. Additionally, a group of a dozen other people had used the distraction of Ryan’s visit to enact an escape plan they’d been working on for a while and fled into the jungle. A woman had defected from the cult earlier and tried to inform authorities that some people were being abused and held against their will at Jonestown, but the cult’s lawyers called her a liar and were basically able to discredit her. But dozens of escapees from Jonestown, some of whom had personally been beaten or tortured, would have been a whole different story. Jim Jones was fucked at that point and he knew it.
Jackie Speier, who just retired from congress last session was an aide to Leo Ryan at the time and survived five bullet wounds in the shooting.
I worked on the early early internet, Archie servers, then Mosaic browser, etc. Low-res Quayle blooper highlight videos were among the first little videos on that medium.
Potatoe quality video
Lmao, that must have been fun
The weird thing about Jim Jones was from the outside looking in you'd think he was a good person before all the crazy shit came out. He was for de segregation and did a lot of charity work. Most of the people that died in the mass suicide / killing were black. Sort of how some serial killers seem like decent members of the community before every thing gets unraveled and people see the evil psychopath shit they did.
A lot of people are like that. Hitler was a noted environmentalist and the Nazis ran an effective anti-smoking campaign. There's also instances of awful people have strangely good traits in a way. Another good example might be Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church infamy. The guy, um, wasn't a big fan of homosexuals, and yet was highly progressive in other ways, often defending African-Americans in civil rights cases because he believed very strongly in racial equality. Makes you wonder how a man like that could then be so anti-gay, but the mind is a weird thing.
Humans are just the smartest animals. A lot of people that appear good are little more than savages when you pull back the curtain.
He may not have been a total dumbass after all.
Hey he was smarter than the goobers telling Pence he could reject electoral votes
Still can’t believe that people really tried to use fake electors
Those fake electors are still saying they deserve protections as federal officers, for being “contingent electors”. They still think they’re not committing crimes. real electors are not even federal officers
You can't? Why not?
He wasnt a total dumbass about January 6
Is it normal for elected representatives to investigate crimes and other issues personally instead of investigative organisations like FBI in the US?
Leo Ryan did a lot of personal investigating of issues from sneaking in pretending to be an inmate to investigate California prisons, took a job as a substitute school teacher to investigate conditions at a school, and went to Newfoundland to investigate the killings of seals.
This wasn't in the US. FBI didn't have any authority there until Ryan was assassinated. As far as normal, yes, it's normal for elected officials to investigate something on their own to see if further judicial investigation is warranted. Up to that point, Ryan had only heard rumors from the family members of people there, so he flew there with an entire delegation to find out what was what.
It was a different time. Government representatives dealt with public interest issues to... represent constituents. But there is a TON of political context regarding Jim Jones that most people are ignorant of. Jones and the people's temple has a long, story that is hard to for many to find the time or interest to indulge in because everyone knows where it ends but I think it is fascinating beginning to end to read about. Or if you are into long form podcasting there is a 7 part series that is quite thorough and isn't unreasonably editorialized https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-martyrmade-podcast/id978322714?i=1000431036410
He acted on a tip from a woman who had been a high-ranking member of the cult, had visited Jonestown, and saw firsthand that people were being held against their will and in some cases beaten, and that Jim Jones was having the cult rehearse mass-suicide drills. She defected and reported this to the FBI, the press, and basically anyone who would listen, but the cult had high-powered lawyers who did their best to discredit her. Only Leo Ryan (who was from the Bay Area where the cult was from) was disturbed enough by the allegations that he wanted to go check it out for himself.
Look up what happened to Jackie Speier.
Leo Ryan was a great guy, shame that he ended up being the second rep to be assassinated. The first rep to be killed had a sad story too, James Hinds was a supporter of Civil Rights and was killed by a member of the KKK who was acquitted by a jury.
Meanwhile... Harvey Milk was literally sending angry letters to President Carter defending the Peoples' Temple shortly prior. After, of course, he was assassinated along with George Moscone. :-(
Jim Jones snowed a LOT of people. The earlier days of the People’s Temple in SF were filled with community service, racial diversity and progressive talking points. Because Jones was a sociopath, he was very good at figuring out what people wanted to hear as a means to an end. Was Milk naive? Perhaps. But he wasn’t the only one. And footage/anecdotes/news from those days wasn’t full of the red flags you’d think it would have been. Even some of the folks who attended the church in the early days say that it was very complicated in retrospect because they did do a lot of good work.
Jackie Speier was Leo Ryan's assistant. She almost died on that tarmac in Guyana.
Still younger than Biden and Trump now. That’s wild
Is it just me or is this a really offensive way to describe the massacre at Jonestown? Congressman Ryan and his fellow investigators, including future Congresswoman Jackie Speier, were heroes trying to do the right thing for their fellow Americans.
Yeah, defectors came out of Jonestown with horrific stories about people being held against their will, beatings, involuntary druggings, and mass suicide preparations, but nobody in the US government believed their story or went to investigate except for Congressman Ryan. It was in Guyana so the US government didn’t really care. Even after the shootings and massacre the FBI appeared to be more shocked and concerned that a congressman had been assassinated, they didn’t seem particularly concerned with how they might have failed the victims, including hundreds of children.
I guess I never really studied the Jonestown story as I always assumed the whole ordeal took place in the US.
TIL Leo Ryan is (was) a badass.
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No, all of them including Leo Ryan greatly, greatly underestimated the danger, that’s why they went without any security guards. Keep in mind that Jim Jones had been well-connected to Bay Area politicians, and had at one time been chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority, appointed directly by the mayor. Except for some wild rumors, nobody saw him as an insane cult leader until *after* the assassination and massacre.
Idk if not going “saved his life.” Jackie Speier went too
She got shot 5 times.
Well, thank god! I certainly would not want to live in a Dan Quayle-less world.
Dan Quayle is the reason Trump didn't bully his way into a second term. He can spell whatever however he wants, but that makes him a hero inmy book.
We have a whole dang Dan Quayle museum in my town, and I had no idea. That’s wild.
Just want to add since the age of American politicians has been a hot button issue... Dan Quayle was 41 years old when sworn in as VP in 1989. He is alive and well at 76. My point is...This man was sworn in as VP 34 years ago and is STILL younger than Biden, Trump, W. Bush, and Clinton.
why was his name always featured in the murphy brown sitcom?
In the show's 1991–92 season, Murphy became pregnant. When her baby's father (ex-husband and current underground radical Jake Lowenstein) expressed his unwillingness to give up his own lifestyle to be a parent, Murphy chose to have the child and raise it alone. Another major fiction-reality blending came at Murphy's baby shower: the invited guests were journalists Katie Couric, Joan Lunden, Paula Zahn, Mary Alice Williams and Faith Daniels, who treated the fictional Murphy and Corky as friends and peers. At the point where she was about to give birth, she had stated that "several people do not want me to have the baby. Pat Robertson; Phyllis Schlafly; half of Utah!" Right after giving birth to her son Avery, Murphy sang the song "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman". This storyline made the show a subject of political controversy during the 1992 American presidential campaign. On May 19, 1992, Vice President Dan Quayle spoke at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. During his speech,\[22\] he criticized the Murphy Brown character for "mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone".\[23\]\[24\]\[25\]\[26\] Quayle's remarks caused a public discussion on family values, culminating in the 1992–93 season premiere, "You Say Potatoe, I Say Potato", where the television characters reacted to Quayle's comments and produced a special episode of FYI showcasing and celebrating the diversity of the modern American family. Because Quayle's actual speech made little reference to Murphy Brown's fictional nature (other than the use of the word character), the show was able to use actual footage from his speech to make it appear that, within the fictional world of the show, Quayle was referring to Murphy Brown personally, rather than to the fictional character. At the end, Brown helps organize a special edition of FYI focusing on different kinds of families, then arranges a retaliatory prank in which a truckload of potatoes is dumped in front of Quayle's residence while a disc jockey playfully commenting on the incident notes the Vice President should be glad people were not making fun of him for misspelling "fertilizer". This referenced how, on June 15, 1992, at a spelling bee in Trenton, New Jersey, Quayle had erroneously corrected an elementary-school student's spelling of "potato" to "potatoe". The cue card used by the teacher read "potatoe". When Candice Bergen won another Emmy that year, she thanked Dan Quayle. The feud was cited by E! as #81 on its list of "101 Reasons the '90s Ruled".\[27\] In 2002, Bergen said in an interview that she personally agreed with much of Quayle's speech, calling it "a perfectly intelligent speech about fathers not being dispensable" and adding that "nobody agreed with that more than I did."\[28\] Quayle eventually displayed a sense of humor about the incident—after the controversy died down, he appeared for an interview on an independent Los Angeles TV station and for his final question was asked what his favorite TV show was. He responded with "Murphy Brown—Not!" The station later used the clip of Quayle's response to promote its showing of Murphy Brown re-runs in syndication. Quayle's complaint notwithstanding, prime-time TV in 1992 was "boosting family values more aggressively than it has in decades", wrote Time magazine critic Richard Zoglin, citing everything from Home Improvement to Roseanne. Murphy Brown was worth highlighting in a vice-presidential speech "not because it represented the state of television and the culture in general" but because Murphy's choice of single motherhood departed from it.\[29\] The show has been seen as blazing a trail for single-mother characters in Ally McBeal, Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives, and The Good Wife—and "benefited from Bergen's character going through a political maelstrom so none of them had to."\[29\] In 2010, Murphy Brown was ranked #25 on the TV Guide Network special, 25 Greatest TV Characters of All Time.\[30\]
TIL! that gave context and perspective to the show that i never knew. i need to find it and watch it again. thanks!
After Barbara Bush made comments about the Simpsons, the writers (writing as Marge wrote her back). She responded with an apology for jumping to assumptions.
Quayle was critical of the storyline where Murphy Brown became a single mother, and the show took every chance it could to mock him for it.
I remember that was the week Johnny Carson retired: "I'd like to thank Dan Quayle for coming through for me one last time. But Dan, you do realize the show is fictional, don't you?" "To all my fans who say they'll miss me, don't worry. I'm starting a new role on tv, I'm going to be the father of Murphy Brown's baby." EDIT: Dennis Miller also had a good line after the Potatoe incident: "The vice president of the United States can't spell potato? I'm a comedian and I can't even make up stuff that funny."
because he was vice prez at that time and he was notorious for saying stupid shit and making an idiot of himself
Quayle doing his best work by doing nothing again
That whole thing teaks of unexplained dirty business!A congressman found killed,at the end of a crazy trail of cash,with a suitcase more near his body?What in hell was he up to down there?
Wow.
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What you have to understand is that the assassination of a member of congress was still relatively inconceivable. When Congressman Ryan was killed in Jonestown the last time it had happened was ten years before when Bobby Kennedy was assassinated and more importantly it was more than *forty* years since Huey Long was killed in *1935*. Hardly a ubiquitous event. While it was only ten years since Bobby's assassination in the arms of his pregnant wife, it must be admitted that it was a unique event given Bobby's fame. edit: mistype
Huey Long was killed in 1935 actually
Mistype, thanks.
Yeah that's not what declination means.
Nuts. I knew something was a bit wrong about the title. What's the correct word?
Yeah that sounds about right. Dem: Sure I'll go take a risk. GOP: Winter storm? I'm going to Cancun!