Medieval Potatoes?

[Chloe]

I was reading a book last night in which it was claimed that, after Dan Quayle encouraged a student to spell "potato" with an extra "e," George Bush Senior supported him by saying, "Well, that's how Chaucer spelled it."

Did he really say this?

[Andrew of Ware]

Bush may have said the quote, but Chaucer would not have written the word. Potatoes were unknown in Europe at the time Chaucer died (1400). The first potatoes in Europe brought over from the Americas about 100 years later.

[Chloe]

Originally Posted by Andrew of Ware

Bush may have said the quote, but Chaucer would not have written the word. Potatoes were unknown in Europe at the time Chaucer died (1400). The first potatoes in Europe brought over from the Americas about 100 years later.

About 200 years later, but I'm asking if *Bush* actually said it, not Chaucer. The only cite I can find to Bush is the same author, and I found another that credits it to a "senior official."

[Billy Beccles]

Maybe by June 1992, President Bush thought he wasn't going to get his second term, but wasn't going to humiliate his Vice-President any more than the man himself was capable of; if you're not concentrating, you might regard it as a helpful and consoling remark. Or he was vaguely thinking of Shakespeare: Falstaff says something somewhere about the sky raining potatoes or why should the sky not rain potatoes, probably about ten lines before he says reasons are as plentiful as blackberries, which a kind and pneumatic English teacher explained to me when I was thirty-three.

Anyway, the source of Dan Quayle's Potatoe Adventure was William Figeroa. According to these feller-me-lads, young maister Figueroa by 1997

was a 17-year-old high school dropout who had fathered a child and was working a low-paying job at an auto showroom

and they say that as though it was something to be ashamed of. Perhaps I'm just an inverted snob, but if you're working and looking after your sprog, isn't that a good thing?

And wossmore, I suspect that seeing the name Figueroa, we're supposed to think Hispanic; but because of the British Empire Hurrah Hurrah Hurrah, I think of Figueroa as a Mauritian name. Go on, name me a Mauritian who wasn't A) caring, B) sexy or C) good with kids. You can't, can you?

[Bonnie]

From a transcript of Barbara Walters's interview with the Bushes for the 26 June 1992 edition of 20/20, the ABC News program,

WALTERS: What do you think about the jokes about your Vice President or, she said, is that too much of a hot potato?

Pres. BUSH: Funny one. Dan Quayle is doing a first class job and he's been a good Vice President and if he deflects fire from me, okay, all right. And he knows that and he's a good man with a very good, decent family and he has my full support-

WALTERS: Would you-

Pres. BUSH: -and I'm glad they don't give me a spelling bee test every day. Surely, they'd get me on one I should know what it is.

WALTERS: Would you be-

Pres. BUSH: Maybe he was thinking of the Chaucer version of potato.

-- Bonnie

[We'veBeenHad]

I never got why that was such a huge gaffe - I have very intelligent relatives who've spelled it "potatoe" before.

I also never got the big Murphy Brown deal - I saw how they handled it on the show, and were she a real PERSON I'd get it, but she wasn't...she was a fictional character, elsewise he wouldn't have said it.

Though it was kind of funny how they delivered a truck full of potatoEs to the White House.

[Spam & Cookies-mmm]

Quayle says he was reading from the list of spelling words provided by the school. The word was spelled wrong on the list, and he went with that spelling.

wikipedia

[Il-Mari]

Originally Posted by Spam & Cookies-mmm

Quayle says he was reading from the list of spelling words provided by the school. The word was spelled wrong on the list, and he went with that spelling.

wikipedia

I wouldn't be too suprised if that was the case, the 'Commonly Misspelled Words' section of my middle school student handbook had at least three spelling errors. I pointed them out to various teachers and administrators during every one of my three years there, yet although the handbook was updated every year they never bothered to correct them.

- Il-Mari

[Chloe]

Thank you. Bonnie! Once again, your research skills come to the rescue.

[Lainie]

Originally Posted by We'veBeenHad

I never got why that was such a huge gaffe - I have very intelligent relatives who've spelled it "potatoe" before.

It wouldn't have been, if Quayle hadn't already had a reputation for saying things that sounded dumb.

I also never got the big Murphy Brown deal - I saw how they handled it on the show, and were she a real PERSON I'd get it, but she wasn't...she was a fictional character, elsewise he wouldn't have said it.

That's one of the reasons I thought it was stupid, actually: that she wasn't a real person. Commenting on a social trend by citing the acts of a sitcom character just seems silly to me.

Of course, the primary reason that it was stupid is that he completely misrepresented what happened on the show. Murphy Brown didn't choose to raise her child alone; the father took off. And no one called it a "lifestyle choice." The only reference to choice in the show was Murphy Brown's choice not to have an abortion.*

If you must comment on alleged social ills by referencing a TV sitcom, you should at least get the plot points right.

*ETA: And of course, if she had chosen to have an abortion, Quayle would have been just as likely to criticize her for that.

[Johnny Slick]

I think it also had to do with having the child out of wedlock. Still, criticizing a show that was on rather late for providing an incorrect moral message to children was just plain stupid. IMO it was a desperate attempt to make himself relevant. Frankly, I'm surprised that Bush kept him as his VP candidate in '92.

[Lainie]

Here's what Quayle said:

It doesn't help matters when prime time TV has Murphy Brown - a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid, professional woman - mocking the importance of a father, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another "lifestyle choice."

She didn't mock the importance of a father: she wanted to raise the child with the father, and he took off instead. She did bear the child alone: the only other alternative, since she was already pregnant, was abortion, which Quayle would also have disapproved of. And no one but Quayle ever called it a "lifestyle choice."

[Johnny Slick]

Hmpf. Well, far be it for me to defend Dan Quayle.

[Avril]

Originally Posted by Lainie

She didn't mock the importance of a father: she wanted to raise the child with the father, and he took off instead. She did bear the child alone: the only other alternative, since she was already pregnant, was abortion, which Quayle would also have disapproved of. And no one but Quayle ever called it a "lifestyle choice."

Not that I would criticize a woman in that particular position, but there is another alternative (giving the child to adoptive parents) which Quayle probably would prefer.

Avril

[Lainie]

Originally Posted by Avril

Not that I would criticize a woman in that particular position, but there is another alternative (giving the child to adoptive parents) which Quayle probably would prefer.

Avril

Good point. Of course, he (or more likely, his speechwriter) chose to ignore that possibility, too, and focus on things that never happened on the show.