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“Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy, I knew Jack Kennedy, Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”

The retort took on a life of its own in popular culture, to the point where Ronald Reagan’s daughter Patti Davis once said (while complaining about all the candidates who were comparing themselves to her father), “Where is Lloyd Bentsen when you need him?”

The reason Bentsen’s retort worked so effectively is that Quayle was widely viewed as a male bimbo. Blond, good-looking, charming, without a thought in his head. Even Republicans had doubts about Quayle, and the media and comedians had a field day with Quayle for the entire Bush-Quayle administration.

On the other ticket, poor Michael Dukakis had the misfortune of being photographed while driving an Army tank wearing the helmet that the tank driver wears, which has a set of protrusions at the ears to accomodate sealed noise-cancelling headphones. It made Dukakis look like a squirrel, especially Rocky the Squirrel from the “Bullwinkle and Rocky” cartoon series. He never lived it down, and “Dukakis in a tank” is media relations shorthand for a photo-op or publicity that backfires.

Thus, the 1988 US Presidential campaign gave the world two bits of political jargon that have endured.

End of PoliSci lesson.

(… goes back wondering about her personal cartoon favorite… “Where’s Ignatz the Mouse when you need him?” …)

  • judybusy says:
    August 24, 2010 at 12:57 pm

    And we now have Dan Quayle’s son, Ben running for congress in AZ. Ugh.

  • Feminista says:
    August 24, 2010 at 3:59 pm

    #190: I don’t remember the Rocky comparison,but do recall the MSM saying Dukakis lacked charisma.

  • Feminista says:
    August 24, 2010 at 4:01 pm

    P.S.I voted for Jesse Jackson that year.

  • Maggie Jochild says:
    August 24, 2010 at 7:07 pm

    Me, too, Feminista — what I think of as the REAL rainbow flag.

  • Andrew B says:
    August 24, 2010 at 7:10 pm

    h_o_h, 186, and others: I think the preference for e.g. <em> over e.g. <i> goes back to the earliest days of html. Html markup was originally supposed to designate content, not appearance. That would allow the browser to use whatever appearance worked best for that content on its particular platform. Then Mosaic/Netscape came along and fucked it all up — remember the innovative genius of the <blink> tag? What’s happening now is that html is finally getting back to what it was supposed to be all along. You use <em> to indicate that some text should be emphasized. Then the browser, using the style sheet, decides how best to do that — usually by italicizing.

    I guess it’s not exactly the same as what it was, because you can specify appearance using the style sheet. But the underlying idea is to separate content, which is indicated by the html markup, from appearance (should I be writing “presentation”?), which used to be entirely up to the browser but now can be specified with CSS.

    Olivia, see how we stay on topic? ;*>

  • hairball_of_hope says:
    August 24, 2010 at 9:38 pm

    @Feminista (#192)

    Here’s the photo of Dukakis in the tank:

    issue0309/images/life/dukakis.jpg

  • hairball_of_hope says:
    August 24, 2010 at 9:53 pm

    … and here’s Rocky and Bullwinkle:

    entertainment/books/blog/rocky%20and%20bullwinkle.jpg

    (split into two posts to avoid spam-limbo)

    Dukakis and Rocky look like they were twins separated at birth.

    Of course, they aren’t the only politician/comic character combo that looks like a set of twins separated at birth. George W. Bush is a dead-ringer for MAD Magazine’s Alfred E. Newman (“What, me worry?”).

  • ready2agitate says:
    August 24, 2010 at 11:50 pm

    #196 gives me the msg “Forbidden” (and I wanna see that photo!)

    PS My eyes glaze over and cross (er, and skip down) when y’all start to speak that (insert fancy html code for strike-through) devil (un-strike-through) geek-speak – Oy!

  • August 24, 2010 at 11:56 pm

    Hehe, so funny that you should mention Rocky the flying squirrel, Hairball.

    I’m watching NOVA, in the episode about the 4 winged dinosaur. To compare flying vs. gliding, they showed birds in flight and real flying squirrels taking off from trees.

    The episode is super cool anyway, but the flying squirrel also just super cute…..

  • ready2agitate says:
    August 25, 2010 at 12:01 am

    At West Point, Resignation Puts Gay Cadets in Spotlight

    2010/08/25/nyregion/25cadet.html?hpw

    Excerpt:

    “Interviews with three gay cadets, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because revealing their identities could result in expulsion, as well as conversations with Ms. Miller and several gay alumni, painted a portrait of a vibrant, if tiny, gay underground at West Point.”

  • ready2agitate says:
    August 25, 2010 at 12:05 am

    And here is Cadet Katie Miller interviewed on Rachel Maddow: