We're Living in Phyllis Schlafly's America

[BlueMTexpat]

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/04/hulu-mrs-america-phyllis-schlafly-long-shadow/610129/

I literally had NOT made this connection before and it is a startling one. But over here across The Pond, BBC2 began showing the miniseries "Mrs. America" three weeks ago. At approximately the same time, the Swiss French channel RTS1 began airing Series III of the Hulu series "The Handmaid's Tale" that almost immediately follows "Mrs. America."

The similarities were so obvious with this serendipitous juxtaposition.

This article is from April, when the miniseries aired in the US. From the link:

If, as per Baudelaire, the greatest trick the devil played was convincing the world that he didn’t exist, the irony of Phyllis Schlafly’s legacy is that she undermined women so efficiently that her pernicious influence on American politics hasn’t gotten the credit it deserves. During the 1970s, Schlafly was camera-ready pith in pearls and a pie-frill collar, a troll long before the term existed, who’d begin public speeches by thanking her husband for letting her attend, because she knew how much it riled her feminist detractors. Armed only with a newsletter and a seeming immunity to shame, Schlafly took a popular bipartisan piece of legislation—the Equal Rights Amendment, which affirms men and women as equal citizens under the law—and whipped it up into a culture war as deftly as if she were making dessert.

For all her efforts, she actually won very little—she was too toxic for a plum Cabinet post, and too early for a prime-time cable-news show. After her heyday, only glimmers of Schlafly lingered in mainstream culture. The character of Serena Joy in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, who once worked full-time lecturing women on the sanctity of staying home, was partly inspired by her. By the time a hagiographic biography of Schlafly was published in 2005, reviewers deduced that although her impact on the ugliness of American politics had been profound, her manipulation of grassroots resentment (not to mention her isolationism and hostility toward immigrants) had rendered her fogyish and obsolete in the George W. Bush era.

The other great irony of Schlafly is that she died in September 2016, two months before Donald Trump, a leader anointed in her image, beat the first female candidate for president of the United States. Like it or loathe it, the new Hulu series Mrs. America makes clear, we are living in a moment that Schlafly begot. From dirty tricks to media manipulation, brazen lies about crowd sizes to the weaponization of privilege, her ghost is everywhere, and it may never be banished.
...

***********
Excellent article! It is also devastating to see what this woman wrought on us all - but especially women - and how Margaret Atwood so accurately captured the essence of what was happening in the US as early as 1985.

We were warned. We just didn't believe it. Let us hope it is NOT too late for us.

[Freddie]

1. They say only the good die young

Wasn’t she in her late 90s when she graced this earth by leaving? Can’t decide which public figure I despise more, her or Trump. Just like Dolt 45 makes racism “acceptable” to a certain crowd, she made misogyny A-ok. A woman betraying her own. Scum of the earth.

[BlueMTexpat]

2. She was in her early 90s,

which was still more than enough time for her to leave a wide swathe of ruins, not only for women's rights, but also by completely poisoning the well of US politics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllis_Schlafly

Also from the link, which is a great read:

...
Schlafly’s most enduring legacy, in a sense, is the poisoned well of national politics. “While she may not have been consistent in her choice of targets,” Elizabeth Kolbert wrote in The New Yorker in 2005, “Schlafly was unwavering in her characterization of them … Her opponents have invariably been not just wrong or misguided but downright evil.” This kind of rhetoric enables one side to consistently label the other as anti-American, to co-opt national symbols (such as the flag, or the eagle) for themselves, and to claim, seemingly without self-doubt, that God is on their side. In Schlafly’s words, her foes, Kolbert writes, “have always aimed at nothing less than the destruction of ‘civilization as we know it.’” It’s a charge so lofty that not even logic can rise to meet it.
...

[JHB]

7. Precisely. There is no "Trumpism", this attitude is baked into the conservative core

Schlafly and her fellow conservative activists (William F. Buckley, Brent Bozell, etc.) were smarter about it, but they were out to advance their cause at all costs and would wreck anybody who got in their way. The fostered hatred of the media about "liberal press bias", by which they meant "failure to cheerlead the conservative viewpoint."

They spent the 60s and 70s going after and wiping out the Rockefeller Republican wing of the party. If you weren't Conservatively Correct, you either got the boot or were isolated and replaced after retirement with an Approved Conservative.

They were successful at that, so why would they change tactics? Demonize the opposition, push through their agenda, and brazen out the complaints and pushback. Just ask Mitch.

[BlueMTexpat]

8. Yes it is.

And yes they were.

If 45 is NOT defeated in November, they will literally destroy whatever is left of our nation.

[tenderfoot]

18. Slightly OT: I was too young when The Firing Line originally aired..

but I've recently revisited many episodes from the 1960s where Buckley went up against the likes of Gore Vidal, Noam Chomsky and James Baldwin and have come to the conclusion that - other than the high-priced vocabulary - William F. Buckley wasn't that intelligent at all. All three of the men I mentioned cleaned the floor with him. Oh and Brent Bozell's a dipshit too.

[JHB]

22. That was my assessment as well.

[BlueMTexpat]

32. I'm with both you and JHB on that!

[bobbieinok]

3. How I despised her smug hypocratic face! She was everywhere, lecturing women 'stay home and STFU'!!!

[bobbieinok]

4. Her 1964 book A Choice Not An Echo claimed liberalism had taken over the GOP

That the GOP of Rockefeller just 'echoed' the democratic party's agenda

Her book was a major factor in helping Goldwater win the nomination

The book was everywhere!!

[BlueMTexpat]

6. You must have intuited my response

to your earlier post.

[BlueMTexpat]

5. She was awful.

But, for me, what was so disappointing about her is this, also from the link:

...
Schlafly was always a strange candidate for the leader of an anti-feminist revolution. During the Great Depression, when her father lost his job, her mother, who had two degrees, worked as a teacher and a librarian to support the family. Schlafly herself graduated from college at 19 and alternated classes during World War II with working as a ballistics gunner at a munitions factory. When she married her husband, the 15-years-older lawyer Fred Schlafly (played in the series by John Slattery), she promised to cherish him, but not to obey, her New York Times obituary revealed. By 1971, when the series begins, she had worked for the American Enterprise Institute, positioned herself as a national-security expert and strident anti-communist, made a failed run for the House of Representatives, and published five books, including a best-selling manifesto for Barry Goldwater that challenged the Republican establishment and helped Goldwater secure the GOP nomination for the presidency in 1964.
...

She was definitely "do as I say, not as I do."

[North Shore Chicago]

9. It is with no joy

my mom was friends with Schlafly, they both lived in a town just across the river from St. Louis. When I was wee, I remember my mom buying sweet breads and getting the silver ready one Friday a month, I knew that it was for HER. Her ugliness both inside and out seared my very being.

Absolutely one of the worst hypocrites of all time. My mom was almost as mean, and nearly as hypocritical. Except!.....my mom had a REAL degree from Washington University.

[smirkymonkey]

10. Ugh, you must have been traumatized just being around her.

I'm sure you have some stories to tell. That woman was just horrible!

[BlueMTexpat]

12. You have all my sympathy!

[Jamastiene]

20. My mother is against women's rights and has the same mentality.

I can relate to mean mothers. It never leaves you.

[niyad]

11. Thank you for posting this. I had a number of encounters with her over the years, none of

them pleasant.

To this day, I sometimes regret not running her over when I had the chance.

[BlueMTexpat]

13. I remember seeing some

of her television appearances and thought that she was an absolutely terrible human being.

[electric_blue68]

14. Oooh... her. I worked at a small publishing company...

...of which one of their magazines was a gay celebrity, interview, and party publication in the '70's during Schaifly's prommenance.

I don't remember which happened first.

We published an editorial against her .

We also had a bomb scare at our offices. So down about 9 flights of stairs we went. I don't think they found anything.
Still it was surreal, and scary.

Blerggggh.

[BlueMTexpat]

17. ...

Stay safe!

[electric_blue68]

26. Awww, thanks! It was a looong time ago! ...

Though just reading yours and Hortense posts after mine...

I will add maaaybe waaay underneath that all the literaly explosive anti-"riot" stuff being used could add a percentage or 2 of distress that are pinging that memory.

And, it wasn't my first bomb scare.
Thinking about it - fairly unusual for a middle class white woman in America...

I have a theory about the following one which came to me I guess 30 yrs later...

Back in 1967 (or 66) my NYC JHS had a bomb scare. We were marched outside across the street.
My theory: 1) the wider area I lived in then had a lot of Anti-Castro Cubans who had left Cuba 2) My JHS was 1 of only 4 in all of the 5 Burroughs that offered Russian as a third "Foreign" Language course.
Equals = Russia's support for Cuban = bomb scare.

(Unless it was a prank, but only time it ever happened while I was there)

[Hortensis]

15. I don't normally suggest people turn on the boob tube for

news and political shows, but doing that will blast this author's Phyllis Schlafly nonsense fast enough. Don't just check for boobs -- note ages and skin colors as well. And don't just check the talking heads -- look at the powerful people they're interviewing and reporting on!

THIS below is the womanhood Schlafly and the men who let her speak were trying to sell, the 1970s already hopelessly corrupted by advances of the Second Wave:



Schlafley did not create the deeply engrained old-fashioned roles, and they don't live on because of her. She became famous because she was a weird but talented woman pushing notions passionately precious to a few men in power. She tried to bring back what most of society had already moved on from and what fewer and fewer RW reactionaries (mostly religious fanatics) have been trying to force back on us ever since. (Just try selling them to the typical conservative woman now!)

It's not that the White Man's Party doesn't wish to de-power women and reestablish more "traditional" and biblical roles for women, they do. But to pretend what women have now corresponds to the old reality of privileged women getting 4-year degrees from elite colleges to become executive secretaries while they look for socially appropriate husbands and others to state universities to qualify for glam careers as stewardesses is to dreadfully underestimate the enormous advances in women's equality since.

At this point I'm remembering Jane Pauley being fired by male bosses around the time the Reagan era began in 1980 because she was approaching 40 (already a decade past their old sell-by date). Trying to use a younger Deborah Norville to push Pauley out severely damaged Norville's career because viewers were angry and ratings plummeted. It was the men's notions that were already wrinkled and obsolete without their realizing it. 40 years of continued advances ago!

In any case, only an author who has no conception of what Schlafley's America was supposed to be could imagine our world today bears any resemblance. Like someone who compared being held briefly in Portland's federal building to "Abu Ghraib," appallingly insulting to reality.

[BlueMTexpat]

16. This may be one of the very few

times that I disagree with you. At least, in part.

Of course, Schlafly didn't create the roles and of course, she was not alone. And yes, it was the MEN who found her a useful tool who ultimately controlled the agenda and who brought in the Reagan era in the 80s and Gingrich's crazies in the 90s, both of were huge advances for that agenda and harmful to our own. But she certainly managed to convince too many women that they should not question those men's status quo, so that they - like too many of the poor and vulnerable - still keep giving power to those who oppress them.

And yes, there have been extraordinary advances in women's rights because of dedicated feminists. But those rights are being eroded on a daily basis ... and too many in younger generations have NEVER understood the fight. The mere fact that a worthless, monstrous criminally deranged fraud could be "elected" over the best US Presidential candidate in history, in large part because she was a woman, shows that about as starkly as possible.

But for me, the epiphany was how early Margaret Atwood saw how dangerous Schlafly was - not that prominent US feminists did not, they did - and how Atwood was able to create a character "inspired" by her, who shows how much WORSE things could actually get in what is rapidly becoming a dystopian America, where a fanatic and basically lunatic minority are running amok right now.

So before going completely off on my premise, please try watching both of these shows together. And certainly try re-reading Atwood's original novel.

[Hortensis]

21. :) I agree that inimical RW forces have gained dangerous power

and that Margaret Atwood's dystopian fantasy is shockingly relevant to their efforts today. And, yes, there are very strongly socially conservative women who believe passionately that omen's equality is the work of the devil or otherwise just resent the hell out of empowered women. I've clashed with many over the decades, both observing and being the recipient of their spiteful resentment of women who take "men's" jobs. And of course of the men.

But that's them. Those who want to smash women back into the 19th century are a minority even on the right. They've only succeeded as much as they have because too many complacent people across the political spectrum couldn't imagine that they could. On the left they didn't get off their lazy asses to vote and on the right voted with them for other purposes with the notion that the majority would prevail in the end.

Agree that hat's happening politically on the right is very dangerous because socioreligious extremists rightly believe they could use modern technology and severe oppression to control the many if they could control government. They've focused their zealotry on making that happen, funded and used by the new plutocrat classes who foolishly imagine they can control them, although most presumably didn't foresee their flooding into governments via Trump.

But sensible awareness and fear of that danger shouldn't make us forget that they're the ones battling enormously powerful tides of progress. They've been losing for centuries; and in this century alone, advances for humanity that they see as losses have accelerated enormously, with degrees of change that once took millennia now occurring over a couple of decades.

Of course they're fighting it. That's their nature. And a great advantage to them is that the nature of too many happily riding the great tides has been to wonder what on earth their problem is. Phyllis Schlafley and her admirers were already freaks in her time, a reality TV show watched with fascinated amusement and contempt by the majority, and a little fear by those less complacent.

That fear's been borne out, of course, and I agree the men who allowed Schlafley to become a big voice for them could still win. Temporarily but dreadfully. If everyone else lets them. For sure, the author's right that it is a tragedy for Schlafley, long ago kicked to the political gutter by RW men, that she didn't live to be newly thrilled by today's disasters.

[BlueMTexpat]

23. I can heartily endorse this

response.

And THIS is so true (emphasis mine):

They've only succeeded as much as they have because too many complacent people across the political spectrum couldn't imagine that they could. On the left they didn't get off their lazy asses to vote and on the right voted with them for other purposes with the notion that the majority would prevail in the end.

[electric_blue68]

28. Hi I still think there are more of them...

... out there than you think, still, unfortunately!

Yes, the tides have been turning against them. Of course right now they're bellowing and unfortunately acting out more than they have in the past ? 20- 25 yrs because of drumph & co.

As I said I remember Schaifly, the defeat of ERA, Gingrich, etc, etc.

I remember (not discounting his faults) RW Radio callers saying Bill Clinton was too concerned about "women's" issues, and that they should take the vote away from women because they put him in office!

[Hortensis]

30. Well, there are a lot who've been voting with the far right

out of partisan spite, true, and they're a problem; but those who imagine joy and true womanly fulfillment as Schlafley intended, not so many.

, remembering weddings of a couple of girls who apparently never wondered ahead of time if the humbly submissive religious vows they they were raised to believe in might be incompatible with the "Valley Girl" cultural expectations that had also been inculcated. Final tally: Vals 100, fundamentalist women's roles 0, ex- husbands 0. As my husband and I pretty much expected.

[electric_blue68]

31. Oh, ha! Now's that's some This vs That! LOL! :D

[electric_blue68]

27. Hi I'd have to also partly disagree about back then...

Last edited Thu Jul 23, 2020, 08:56 PM - Edit history (1)

I think there was more sexism not only amongst the kind of people Schaifly appealed to including religions Conservatives, but there was plenty (if less restraining) going on in moderate Republicans, and Democrats as well.

Wow I didn't know (bc I probably didn't read interviews with MA) she based a major HT character on PS! I did read HT in the '80's in paperback. I didn't remember tons of it, but I did remember some; a bit of the religious stuff, the removals of the rights women had gained, the HT part, the subservience. Yikes!

[BlueMTexpat]

33. In light of the Schlafly inspiration,

another connection I also "finally" made was with the name "Offred."

Remember how each Handmaiden has no identity of her own, but only through the husband of the couple she is assigned to: "Of" + the name of the husband.

Schlafly's husband was named Fred, as is Serena Joy's husband, thus "Offred." That is likely not sheer coincidence.

*****
In any event, this article is an interesting read.

[electric_blue68]

34. Oh! ...

Until Hortense (I think) mentioned it, I didn't know that Serena Joy was partially inspired by Schaifly!

And now you realized Of/fred! Blarg!

Such a terrifying but great show in it's creating: writing, acting, directing, cinematography, music. Wow.
I have see if Hulu still has their 1 wk or 1 month trial. I really want to see the rest.

So much shuddery great stuff in it. I've only seen it in the past 6 - 8 months. I retook it out just before the close down, still have till library opens. So it's still pretty fresh in my mind!

[BlueMTexpat]

37. Margaret Atwood is a consultant

on the series.

Atwood also has published a more recent novel, "The Testaments," which is a sequel to THT, set 15 years later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Testaments

Radical RW religiosity is definitely a feature of Schlafly's vision of the USA. Her support and that of the RRW for the Criminally Deranged Thug and Fraud in the WH show exactly how hypocritical and fraudulent RRW religiosity truly is.

[electric_blue68]

38. Oh I had forgotten about the "The Testaments"...

oh, thanks !

Must get it on e-reader from my library!

[Jamastiene]

19. Almost all women are like her, where I live.

I'm the only feminist here in my hometown. The rest are like her, but way more ignorant. They don't want to be seen as troublemakers. I'm on my own, pretty much living that miserable life where women are below hunting dogs.

[BlueMTexpat]

24. Even though it may not seem like it,

YOU are in the majority, especially here on DU!

Please know that we are with you in spirit!

[Jamastiene]

25. Thank you.

I wish that I could meet someone more like most of the people of DU in real life. It would be awesome to know some nice people in real life instead of what I have to deal with normally.

[electric_blue68]

29. Yikes! Stay safe! From what I've seen since ...

....I've only been here about a month now : that there are a lot of caring people, and a bunch of feminist women here to support each other, and you in spirit.

As do I.

[AntiFascist]

35. As you might notice in the final episode of Mrs. America...

Schlafly advocated for the election of Donald Trump in her final book:

https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/07/politics/phyllis-schlafly-donald-trump-book/index.html

Washington (CNN)Phyllis Schlafly, an early supporter of the Religious Right, encouraged Christians to get behind Donald Trump in her final book, "The Conservative Case for Trump."
...

[BlueMTexpat]

36. I still haven't seen

the last three episodes. I have to wait for the BBC2 scheduling.

But yes, she remained consistently awful throughout the [too] many years of her life!