If the university doesn't accede to the great
many protests
that have sprung up in response to the news (and it
doesn't look as if they will), Phyllis Schlafly will earn an honorary
doctorate from Washington University in Saint Louis tomorrow. Schlafly, of
course, has been an immeasurable force for bad over her long life, her torpedoing
of the Equal Rights Amendment being just her most famous act in a series of acts
that have done great damage to the cause of gender equality. So, while Schlafly
is being feted tomorrow, it's important to read (or re-read) Alan Wolfe's excellent
2006 piece on her, entitled "Mrs.
America." Just one of many key passages:
The ugliness of American politics today can be
directly traced back to Schlafly's vituperative, apocalyptic,
character-assassinating campaign against the ERA. In Slander, her 2002 contribution to American letters, Ann Coulter
described Schlafly as "one of the most accomplished and influential people
in America"
and "a senior statesman in the Republican Party." Coulter was right.
Karl Rove only perfected what Phyllis Schlafly invented. And the wild, filthy
rhetoric of Coulter and some of her screaming reactionary colleagues owes a
great deal to Schlafly. We are lucky, come to think of it, that Schlafly
flourished in the days before cable.
Again, here's the link.
--The Editors