Phyllis Schlafly

Phyllis Schlafly, in a rare recent photograph and wearing a fake Chanel.

“”Lady, your husband ain't dead. He's hiding.

—Gus, The Ref (1994).

Phyllis Schlafly (1924- ), or "The Wicked Witch of the Midwest", is a professional ultra-conservative and anti-feminist political activist and published author (it's not the same as "writer", which requires true writing talent). She promotes her activities through her organization, the Eagle Forum.

Biography

Background

Raised in St. Louis, the daughter of a failed inventor, she put herself through Washington University (Class of '44) by working 48 hours a week testing machine guns at a local arms plant. After earning an M.A. in political science from Radcliffe in 1945, she returned to St. Louis to edit a conservative newsletter.

Career

Never trust an author who has written more books than they have read

After marriage in 1949 to John Fred Schlafly Jr.(1909-1993), a wealthy corporate lawyer, she became increasingly involved in right-wing Republican politics. In addition to starting her own national newsletter, the Phyllis Schlafly Report, she was a delegate to three G.O.P. conventions and served as president of the Illinois Federation of Republican Women. When she ran for the presidency of the National Federation of Republican Women in 1967, she lost in a bitter campaign against a more moderate candidate. Schlafly's own next-door neighbor in Alton, a housewife and active Republican, accused her at the time of being "an exponent of an extreme right-wing philosophy—a propagandist who deals in emotion and personalities where it is not necessary to establish facts or prove charges." (Sound familiar?)

To her defenders, Phyllis Schlafly is one of America's best-known advocate of the full-time homemaker. Schlafly has been a staunch conservative leader since the publication of her best-selling book, A Choice Not An Echo, which she wrote for Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign. She also has been a member of the pro-family movement since 1972, when she started her national volunteer organization, Eagle Forum.

The ERA

In a ten-year battle, Schlafly led the "pro-family" movement to victory over the Equal Rights Amendment, the principal legislative goal of feminists at the time. Recreating that pivotal moment, "[Schlafly], looking crisp and composed in a red shirtwaist dress, red-white-and-blue scarf and frosted hair, arrived at the Illinois capitol with 500 followers. To symbolize their opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, which was about to be voted on in the House, the women had brought loaves of home-baked bread—apricot, date nut, honey-bran and pumpkin. But as she climbed onto a kitchen stool to address the cheering crowd, Schlafly the demure housewife turned into Schlafly the aggressive polemicist. The passage of ERA, she declared, would mean Government-funded abortions, homosexual schoolteachers, women forced into military combat, men refusing to support their wives, and unisex bathrooms."

Dark side

Phyllis' greatest hits.

Her detractors have a very different impression of Phyllis Schlafly, who is hardly a typical housewife.

She is the author of nine books, a three-time candidate for the U.S. Congress, a full-time law student at Washington University in St. Louis, editor of a monthly newsletter, a twice-a-week syndicated newspaper columnist, and regular speaker at anti-liberal rallies. In other words, she acts very much like a liberated woman, as opposed to staying in the kitchen and making a sandwich. She employs a full-time housekeeper to care for her six-bedroom Tudor-style mansion overlooking the Mississippi River in Alton, Ill. "My husband lets me do what I want to do," she says, "I have canceled speeches whenever my husband thought that I had been away from home too much."

"Besides", Phyllis adds, "when I fill out applications, I put down 'mother' as my occupation."

She boasts that she breast-fed (We're sorry, we can't get the image out of our heads either) every one of her six children and later taught each of them how to read.

Marital rape

The controversial lady who fought successfully to scare politicians away from the ERA has now revealed some of her underlying thinking, including -- incredibly -- the notion that husbands have carte blanche when it comes to raping their wives: "By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don't think you can call it rape," she has said. Frightfully, Phyllis thinks a husband can rape his wife any time he wants to.

No one has witnessed how such concepts has work out with Phyllis Schlafly, and since her husband died back in 1993, we do not expect to see that happening in the foreseeable future.

Elements of style

Oral style

Schlafly has a distinctive and recognisable oration style in her articles and radio broadcasts. She frequently uses prefixes such as 'liberal', 'radical' and 'feminist' in a pejorative context as snarl words. It is frequently clear that she isn't thinking clearly about the subjects she addresses, for example condemning modern literature being taught in school for having "gloomy themes such as murder, ... and suicide" while at the same time promoting the teaching of Shakespeare, whose plays such as Hamlet, Macbeth, and Julius Caesar regularly include such themes. In the same radio program, she also condemned sexual imagery in literature while at the same time promoting the works of Chaucer. It appears she is unfamiliar with, for example, The Miller’s Tale and The Reeve's Tale.

Andrew Schlafly appears to have adopted a similar style in his own writing, and, indeed, his "thinking".

Anal style

No details are yet forthcoming. And, to be honest, we don't want any.^{[citation NOT needed]}

Other noteworthy "achievements"

• 1992 Illinois Mother of the Year
• The Ladies' Home Journal named her as one of the 100 most important women of the 20th century
• She appears in debate on college campuses more frequently than any other conservative
• Mother of six:
  • Andrew Schlafly, founder of Conservapedia
  • Roger Schlafly, loose cannon on his brother Andrew's blog, and successful competitive "gurgitator". Also, lonely...
  • John Schlafly, a confirmed bachelor
  • Anne Schlafly, owner of Kitchen Conservatory, who makes cooking fun.
  • Liza Schlafly, who also studied law.
  • Bruce Schlafly, a hand surgeon.
• Received honorary degree from Washington University in St. Louis, prompting a massive student protest.

See also

• Archived Vandalism
• Kinder, Küche, Kirche
• Schlafly; our fork page for the various Schlaflys and their eponymous articles.
• Our transcriptions of her son's guest appearance on her radio show.

External links

• Her website
• Phyllis Schlafly's career as a NeoCon
• Happy Birthday Phyllis
• Anti-ERA evangelist wins again
• Phyllis on MySpace