Dear Phyllis

I remember Phyllis Schlafly's emergence into the public forum. I thought her a fool then and still do. She was the rightwing response to Friedan's Feminine Mystique and Steinem's Ms. I was living in Chicago at the time Ms. Phyllis began foraging for a career. A 1950ish version of Ann Coulter in a string of pearls wearing an apron. A two-time loser for a congressional seat (1952 and 1970) she vented her wrath on the "liberal" public in other ways.

She gained notice by preaching the manifesto of woman as subservient. She is credited with the defeat of the ERA (Equal Rights Amendment) if you remember that one. She claimed passage of the ERA would require unisex bathrooms, taxpayer-funded abortions, same-sex marriage, the drafting of women into the military, an end to automatic maternal child custody in the case of divorce. Well good god Phyllis we've pretty much got most of those things going on anyway. All that noise and building your wall of fame didn't make womanhood any better.

The Stormfront White Nationalist Community praised Mrs. Schlafly "as a great example of a brilliant, strong Woman who is also a dynamic, dedicated mother and a submissive, righteous wife." Nevermind that she missed a few bake sales and recitals as she scrambled and shook to construct a lucrative career, built on the premise of convincing all the other little women to stay at home and submit to their men. Looking at divorce rates and women in the work force it appears that advice wasn't taken seriously. But as the Stormfront morphs it, you can be all things: Brilliant, strong, dynamic, and submissive. I guess that kind of genius goes over my head.

Schlafly, unable to win an election herself did the next best thing: Support and contort the ideas that allow politicians to waste time and tax money on frivolous issues while securing their luxurious mini-empires within the state. Mischief passed off as compassionate politics. Using the benefits provided by the feminist movement she built a career bitching about the evils of the feminist movement.

And of course she can be found with the sexually deprived, good 'n greedy super patriot Townhall hypocrites. President of Eagle Forum where she lists her favorite Bills to stop, pass, or support. All to do with renegade judges, pledge allegiance, marriage protection, illegal Mexicans, etc.

Schlafly's Eagle Forum produced a video that portrayed the feminist movement, multiculturalism, reproductive rights, gay rights, environmental concerns, global cooperation, and even chemical weapons treaties as part of a secret conspiracy to promote a socialist One World Government and New World Order.

The video, Global Governance: The Quiet War Against American Independence, claims that President Clinton is part of a conspiracy involving a small elite group of international power brokers who are close to government and "equally devoted to secrecy and the secret use of financial influence in political life." No shit girlfriend. You mean multinational corporations and politicians in bed together?

Phyllis is like most on the right. She spent a lifetime devising a liberal evil conspiracy theory, placed the burden of all social ills on democrats, the poor, the foreign, diversity, gays, feminists, but she still doesn't see how her own avarice has been used to further an agenda that knows neither right nor left, but uses both. She has to notice, after 50+ years of pounding an ideology, that most of what she has been against has come to pass.

Her rhetoric worked so well for so long but of late some stances don't blend into the rightwing seamlessly as they once did. It's dissonance dear. And that's what occasionally gives these hard-liners a quizzical appearance. More and more they're puzzled by their own lifelong, adamantly held, self-deluded bullshit.