Call Her Mrs.

Coulter's columns seem to appear every Thursday. Thus, every Thursday (or at least by the following Wednesday) you can expect your fearless friends at AntiCoulter.com to respond as quickly as possible with our usual rigorous, inciteful, and dripping with irony rebuttles. Don't you dare read her columns without our help. Think of us as the MST3K of right wing punditry. If that reference passes you by, so be it.
Noticing how disjointed some of Coulter's columns can seem, some of you have asked if these are edited. They are not. I take the words as they are and then add my comments. None of her words are removed. Scary, isn't it?

Call her Mrs.
by Ann Coulter
July 18, 2002

EVEN TAKING INTO account the extraordinary capacity of the left for hallucinatory self-aggrandizement, the insipid blather about the feminists and the total radio silence on Phyllis Schlafly is astonishing.

Phyllis Schlafly? Who last had a book in 1990? Damn, those liberals really DO ignore cutting edge news! Of course, Coulter already covered the liberal conspiracy against Schlafly in her book, Slander. But let's cut her a break. She's doing a book tour. It's hard to write all those columns. It's easy to mine your own material. Still, you'll pardon me if I don't take this essay very seriously.

The elite media cast about for women to praise, hailing any female who has achieved the amazing feat of having passed the bar exam, but treat the stunning accomplishments of Phyllis Schlafly like the publisher of the New York Times treats his SAT scores. (It is a dark secret that must not be revealed.) Schlafly simply cannot be mentioned--except for the occasional demeaning caricature.

Last I checked the pages of the New York Times was mostly filled with guys, not accomplished women. So where does this myth of the elite media and their love of women who have passed the bar exam come from? And is it just me, or is that SAT reference really bizarre?

About the time a young Hillary Rodham was serving as inspiration for the perfect little girl in the Hollywood thriller The Bad Seed, Schlafly was remaking the Republican Party.

OH, I get it: the bar exam reference was another subtle dig at Hillary Clinton. Gosh, what would Coulter do without the Clintons? Can we please find some more villains for the right to attack? This Clinton obsession is putting me to sleep. Although the suggestion that Hillary was a literally murderous young child is both sick and strangely fascinating.

In 1964, Schlafly wrote A Choice, Not An Echo, widely credited with winning Barry Goldwater the Republican nomination for president. The book sold an astounding 3 million copies. (The average nonfiction book sells 5,000 copies.) Goldwater lost badly in the general election, but the Republican Party would never be the same.

Goldwater's nomination began the retreat of sellout, Northeastern Rockefeller Republicans who hoped to wreck the country with slightly less alacrity than the Democrats. Without Schlafly, without that book, it is very possible that Ronald Reagan would never have been elected president.

Lots of things are "possible", which makes it such a great word to use. It is true that Schlafly was an influential part of the Goldwater reaction that helped to bring Reagan to power. So were a lot of other people, who also wrote books. And we don't write much about them, either, some thirty-seven years later.

Now, about those Rockefeller Republicans who "hoped to wreck the country"... Isn't it a beautiful image? A bunch of country club types, sitting around in their Park Avenue mansions, smoking cigars (Cuban) and plotting the downfall of the United States of America as they chuckle malevolently. It could be in a James Bond flic. ("Oddjob, go to California and take care of that Reagan troublemaker.")

It would be a ludicrous image if Coulter didn't really seem to believe it, and if she didn't foster these ideas in her cult fan base. And Coulter has the chutzpah to complain about how Democrats have lowered the level of political discourse.

As the feminists spent 20 years engaged in a death-match debate over whether it is acceptable for feminists to wear lipstick, Schlafly was writing 10 books, most of them on military policy.

It is true that some feminists debated some fairly trivial things. And were criticized by other feminists for doing so. I believe, just maybe, they may have been doing a few other things too.

As for Schlafly, yes, she did write a LOT of books. The ones on military policy, however, were co-written with Rear-Admiral Chester Ward, which Coulter only gently alludes to below. It was Ward who provided the nuts and bolts military analysis. This is not to take credit away from Schlafly; I'm simply pointing out she was part of a team effort with a retired military man. Something Coulter deemphasizes in her attempt to puff up Schlafly. Rating: slightly deceptive.

Now, as to those 10 books. Schlafly's own Eagle Forum site lists 19 books, 7 of them, not "most" were on defense issues. The basic point is approximately valid, but... Rating: lazy reporting.

She co-authored The Gravediggers, accusing the elite foreign-policy establishment of cheerfully selling out the nation's military superiority to the Soviet Union. That book sold 2 million copies. She also co-authored the extremely influential (and extremely long, at more than 800 pages) Kissinger on the Couch, methodically dissecting Kissinger's foreign policy and attacking his beloved Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty.

The basic message of these books was that the US government, led by liberals and east coast Republicans, was soft on Communism and was trying to sell out America by limiting our nuclear arsenal. Schlalfy once called nuclear weapons "a marvelous gift that was given to our country by a wise God." (We wonder what she thinks of Anthrax, Bubonic Plague, and Disco?)

First, these books repeat the myth that America was losing the arms race during the period (Kennedy and Johnson administrations) when America's long-range nuclear arsenal was growing by leaps and bounds. It is true that the Soviet arsenal was also growing, but this was in reaction to our nukes--remember, we were the first to get the bomb--and there wasn't much we could do to stop them barring nuking them. So we built more, and they built more. It was this massive growth of both arsenals that was scaring the crap out of every sane person, even among those responsible.

Except, of course, on the radical right. Kennedy's Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara--who Schlafly and Chester accuse of selling out America--was the man who adopted the strategy of "Assured Destruction" and helped to create what he called a "stable balance of terror." If this is the guy who's "soft" on Communism, I'd hate to see the ones who were tough.

Meanwhile, the feminists moved on from the weighty lipstick debate to pornography. (As Irving Kristol has suggested, their primary area of agreement was that 18-year-old girls performing sex on stage should be paid the minimum wage.)

Yes, some feminists sometimes talk about pornography, while ignoring more important issues. Oddly enough, so do many conservatives. For example: "The nation is swimming in pornography. You can't turn on TV without seeing simulated sex scenes." -- Ann Coulter, April 25, 2002.

And please do note the nimble way Coulter makes the direct leap (ignoring my comments) from the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty to on-stage pornography. This may be a first.

An early and vigorous proponent of a missile defense shield, Schlafly has written extensively about ICBMs and missile-defense treaties. Her work was a major factor in President Reagan's decision to proceed with the High Frontier technology.

Which remains a dubious, unproven, and widely derided concept. Honestly, this does not mean it is necessarily stupid--lots of smart things get derided early on--but it does lead to a teensy weensy bit of skepticism regarding Schlafly's brilliance.

Having reached agreement on the necessity of a minimum wage for prostitutes (oops "sex workers"), feminists turned their inexplicable wrath on the titles "Mrs." and "Miss."

About the same time, Schlafly noticed that the Equal Rights Amendment was sailing toward ratification without anyone noticing. When Schlafly took up her battle against the ERA, the Senate had passed it by 84 to 8. The House had passed it by 354 to 23. The ERA was written in to both the Republican and Democratic Party platforms. Thirty states had approved it in the first year after it was sent to the states for ratification. Only eight more states were needed.

But the ERA had not yet faced Phyllis Schlafly. Over the next eight years, thanks to Schlafly and her Eagle Forum, only five states ratified it--but five other states rescinded their earlier ratifications.

What the feminists lacked in linear thinking, they made up for in viciousness, control of the media and Hollywood glitz. As Schlafly said, feminists had "the movie star money and we have the voters." With an army of women behind her, Schlafly defeated the ERA, beating both political parties, two presidents, the Senate, the House and a slew of Hollywood celebrities.

She does deserve a great deal of credit/blame here. The woman worked hard.

Soon feminists took up the issue of girl-firemen, demanding to know what possible arguments there were, pray tell, for women not to be firemen. (A short list: their inability to pick up the hose, their tendency to cry and panic when confronted with dangerous situations, the effect on families whose homes are on fire when they open the door and see the female equivalent of Michael Dukakis in a tank.)

Another fake Coulter issue. "Feminists took up the issue." How many? Two? Three? Great! Let's indict all feminists and condemn feminism as a movement! And "their tendency to cry and panic when confronted with dangerous situations". What contempt for women. What's more, it disrespects conservative icon Margaret "Iron Lady" Thatcher, who was not known for her wimpy crying jags.

Schlafly moved on to ludicrous United Nations treaties, the Violence Against Women Act, sexual harassment law, values-clarification programs and other monstrosities too numerous to catalog. People who dismiss her as a mere demagogue or rabble-rouser either don't read her work or don't have any idea what actual "scholarship" is.

She was nearly the first woman ever to attend Harvard Law School--though it did not then admit women, Schlafly's Harvard professors found her so brilliant that they offered to make an exception for her. (She declined.) Instead, she married, raised six amazingly accomplished children and later attended law school in her 50s--all while fighting the establishment in her free time. She is brilliant, beautiful, principled, articulate, tireless and, most important, absolutely fearless.

That Phyllis Schlafly is the mortal enemy of a movement that claims to promote women tells you all you need to know about the feminists. That most people know more about Madeleine Albright's brooch collection than Schlafly's achievements tells you all you need to know about the media.

Schlafly is good. She doesn't like feminists. That means feminists are bad. Bad feminists, bad, bad. My god, with logic like this, where can't we go?

©2002 Carl Skutsch. All rights reserved.
All opinions expressed herein are those of the author unless otherwise noted
(and it goes without saying that they make more sense than Coulter's opinions.)

graphics & design by pixelforge