Pure awesome from Phyllis Schlafly:
And she warned them about having personal relationships with feminists. “Find out if your girlfriend is a feminist before you get too far into it,” she said. “Some of them are pretty. They don’t all look like Bella Abzug.”
Nope, no war on women here.
It’s too bad Phyllis Schlafly is such a nut, because I really like the name “Phyllis Schlafly”.
Hunter Gathers
Everyone in that audience all asked themselves ‘Who the fuck is Bella Abzug?’.
Villago Delenda Est
I’m afraid that Phyllis Schalfly has spoiled that name for me for all time. What with this “all you sluts get back on that tether between the kitchen and your master’s play room, except me, of course!” crap the foul harridan has been pushing for some 50 odd years.
SteveM
Rush Limbaugh and Phyllis Schlafly are both still using “women’s lib” jokes from Bob Hope’s reject file.
Villago Delenda Est
Not only do they all not look like Bella Abzug, they all don’t look like Phyllis Schalfly, either.
CMM
And everyone in the audience went, “Who is Bella Abzug”?
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
Ms. Schlafly is one of the most baffling figures in all of political history to me. I continue to be amazed at a woman who’s made a career out of insisting that women shouldn’t have careers.
beltane
Yeah, you have to watch out for those deceptively beautiful feminists. They use birth control and might be willing to have sex with you. Oh, the horror of it all.
Omnes Omnibus
@beltane: Do you have their contact info?
Calouste
And of course the only thing that is important about a woman is whether she looks pretty /rolleyes
geg6
When will this old, dried up, bitter witch die? She’s gotta be ancient. Hell, she looked old to me back in the 70s.
Bubblegum Tate
“Phyllis Schlafly” is exactly the name you’d give to that bitter hag.
The Other Chuck
The only person dumber than Phyllis Shafly is her son, Andrew: the braintrust behind Conservapedia and the effort to write a Conservative version of the Bible. Really, I hope Phyllis gets herself and her son in the news more as the standard-bearers of conservatism, because you can usually count on several own-goals every time they open their traps.
Craig
I’m not sure how to square this post with this glowing portrait that I found on what appears to be an online encyclopedia. Please advise.
geg6
@Villago Delenda Est:
She was one of the first people to illustrate for me the fact that the Right is full of nothing but evil hypocrites. Barefoot and pregnant for thee, but not for me!
mcd410x
Love that R.E.M. tune. Pretty persuasion, not Phyllis Schlafly.
Steve
I’ve got a little list – of society offenders who never would be missed.
shortstop
Goddamn her confusion. Everyone here who finds Phyllis Schlafly physically attractive, now or in her younger iterations, raise your hand. Yeah, that’s what I thought. And Bella Abzug has been dead for 14 years. Please join us in the 21st century, Phyl.
Rita R.
She’s still alive? Not only were they thinking who’s Bella Abzug, they were also wondering, who’s Phyllis Schlafly. Wingnut welfare is nothing new.
ETA: what 21-year-old man is going to take advice on women from this bitter old throwback.
beltane
@Craig: I’ve never clicked to Conservapedia before, and I have to say it’s lamer than I imagined, sort of like a cheap knock-off of Jesus’s General.
scav
ssshhhh . . . nobody tell her it was a cunning in-joke at The Citadel as it’s actually Zombie/Resurrection week there in honor of the upcoming holiday (you should see the rest of the lecture series).
shortstop
Isn’t her son gay? How’d that go down in the senior Schlafly household?
cckids
After reading “When Everything Changed”, and getting more acquainted with Ms. Schlafly & her ideas and beliefs, I can safely say, “Phyllis Schlafly can DIAF”. Soon, please FSM.
Craig
@beltane: If it’s one of their binkies like evolution or Ronald Reagan then the article is pretty long. But most of their articles are just short little bits that were obviously written by some home schooled kid who asked their parents. Here’s an example of the usual conservapedia piece.
Blackfrancis
I saw this in the comments of a Jezebel post, and it should be shared.
http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/17iot53n2wbtijpg/original.jpg
ruemara
@shortstop: I believe she disowned him.
The Moar You Know
Feminists are usually smart enough to not get together with a guy that would listen to anything Mrs. Schlafly would have to say, rendering her point utterly moot.
shortstop
@ruemara:
Hmmm, I looked around, and maybe not. Her son told her he doesn’t mind being treated like a second-class citizen, so she’s cool with him. He works for her, or at least did a few years ago, well after he was outed.
On the other hand, we now have the answer to the question of whether anyone thinks Phyl is pretty. Rachel Knust, 18, of South Dakota likes what she sees.
cmorenc
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik:
Another baffling conundrum is: who is the unlucky stiff who’s married to this witch? Phyllis Schlafly is vigorously advocating that women’s proper roles amount to being perfect Stepford wives, while being such a nasty shrew herself.
different-church-lady
Yes, and neither do they all look like Phyllis Schlafly. Caution must be a byword.
beltane
@Craig: This just proves my theory that conservatives are people lacking in curiosity and innate intelligence. They really don’t care to learn about anything, and they resent those people who do.
kindness
Phyllis Schadfly is a direct example that karma works. One of her sons is gay.
dmsilev
@Craig: Conservapedia is always good for a giggle. From their main page, I like this:
CardinalRed
Sad when you have to use the tagline “The Trustworthy Encyclopedia” to try to cover for the mountain of typical electronic CON bullshit you built. FAIL.
I’d
runstep over a thousand Phyllises for one Bella.redshirt
“Bella Abzug” sounds like one of those lesser class demons who work for Satan. Like Beelzebub.
CardinalRed
Seriously, what dude is gonna take dating/sex advice from his great grandmother? Time for pasture, you evil old bag.
Lev
I’ve said it before: if she’s very, very, very lucky, Phyllis Schafly will be forgotten by history. That is the best case scenario. Talk about someone who’s been proudly wrong for decades.
deep
Yeah, her name sort of reminds me of syphilis.
El Cid
If Abzug had more resembled the beauteous Ayn Rand.
Here, however, is a very attractive Bella Abzug defending Willie McGee, the case she’d appeal (unsuccessfully) to the Supreme Court.
I think Schafly is basically agreeing with conservatives that old women are ugly, because they most knew Abzug when she was older. Also, she was Jewish, so, you know, old Jewish women are obviously hideous, unlike gorgeous visions like Ann Coulter.
Here’s Abzug when she was young and with her husband in a very nice photo.
But they really, really hate her because she defended black people from being railroaded, and did so in alliance with Communists, who were among the most prominent in defending African Americans being railroaded or being ignored by the legal system.
SenyorDave
She is, and always has been, a malevolent person, an earlier version of breitbart. The world should breathe a sigh of release when she is worm food.
Comrade Dread
Yeah, imagine the gall of those broads wanting equal rights.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and offer some general advice to all of the single folks out there.
Find out if your S.O. is an asshole before it gets too far.
And, by asshole, I don’t mean someone who has differing political, religious, or family viewpoints. You can work those things out with a non-asshole and reach a compromise or a mutual respectful disagreement (not talk about it, go to different religious services and pray for each other, etc.)
No, by asshole, I mean the type of person who has so little respect for you as an individual that upon hearing that you hold differing viewpoints ceases to treat you as a distinct human being and lumps you into a group of Those.
IM
Old Serena Joy still in the business.
kth
I don’t think that a guy attending a Phyllis Schafly event at The Citadel has to worry much about feminists wanting to date him.
Deb T
Phyllis is dissing Bella’s looks???? Yeah, Bella was no super model, but she was attractive in her own way and had a great personality — and she was smart.
Men are often attracted to feminists because they can carry their own weight, know how to use birth control, and will even open a door for a man once in awhile. I always thought men should be feminists. It takes some of the pressure off them.
Deb T
@Comrade Dread:
Yup, you are correct.
SectarianSofa
Even when she wasn’t young, Bella Abzug was cute. I guess I have a different taste in women than Phyllis
schrodinger's cat
Why all this emphasis on prettiness? Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. Also too, beauty is fleeting but dumb is forever. BTW conservatives does seem awfully proud of their women for being pretty. Case in point Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter, interchangeable Fox News blondbots. I don’t really think any of the above are all that good looking, also the combination of mean and dumb is not all attractive.
Amusing Alias
Phyllis Schafly was first famous for her anti-LBJ screed during the Johnson/Goldwater election in 1964. That’s nearly half-a-century ago. How is she still alive?
Fanshawe
@El Cid:
I was about to post something similar. I’d seen Abzug use as an “LOL ugly” totem before but today I actually looked up her picture for the first time. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I was surprised to find that she’s just a really normal looking lady. Sure, she’s not movie-star gorgeous, but it’s like she’s the elephant man, or Mitch McConnell or something.
Yutsano
@SectarianSofa: It’s the hats. No one could pull off the hats that Bella did.
Fanshawe
@Deb T:
Ding. And eventually, good bye job that I hate, hello stay-at-home dad.
samara morgan
Phyllis Schafly’s son is the founder of Conservapedia.
schrodinger's cat
@Yutsano: Not even Aretha Franklin?
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
@Amusing Alias:
Maybe there’s something to the old trope that the Dark Side/Evil/Hate, like heroin, counter-intuitively increases lifespan.
SectarianSofa
@schrodinger’s cat:
Smart and/or creative and/or strong women are always attractive.
But I think I am more shallow now than I was 20 years ago, and I blame the right wing media. 20 years ago I didn’t trust conventionally ‘attractive’ people. Now I also assume they’re anti-intellectual and proud of it (without evidence to the contrary).
Yutsano
@schrodinger’s cat: You present a compelling argument. I would say they have decidedly different headgear styles. I’ll have to check, but I think some of Bella’s hats are in the Smithsonian as well.
Shinobi
Erik Son of Erik also has something to add to the non war this morning! Who needs women at the Masters, she should just go to one of those women only clubs… like the mall!
SectarianSofa
@Shinobi:
That’s right! Nothing stopping them. Free market at work! Separate but equal!
SiubhanDuinne
Wondering if her speech was officially sanctioned by The Citadel, which has been co-educational for 17 years.
(Course, what would be cool is if all the female cadets boycotted her talk.)
Forum Transmitted Disease
@El Cid: So much win. Also I think you’ve broken my dick.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@The Other Chuck:
At least she has another son.. one that is too busy brewing really good beer to be involved in crazy politics.
Sophist
Bella Abzug yet? Sheesh, why don’t you break out the Suffragette jokes while you’re at it, I’m sure that’ll have all those 20-somethings rolling in the aisles.
gocart mozart
Does anyone else remember Archie Bunker refering to her as “Phyllis Shoe-fly”?
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Whoops! I have to correct that. The brewery Schlafly is the evil Phyllis’s nephew.
j
Her nephew makes some damn fine microbrew beer. I wonder if he’s a wingnut too?
http://www.schlafly.com/
gocart mozart
Kids today with their slang like “groovey” and “far out” and the long hair, what’s up with that.
Bruce S
@Amusing Alias:
True Story: When I was in high school and had a great art teacher who turned me on to “modern art” I had a run-in with Phyllis Schlafly via the St. Louis Globe Democrat, whose chief editorial writer at the time was Pat Buchanan. Schlafly wasn’t known outside of the St. Louis area then, but she was a major wingnut busybody locally – before there were “wingnuts.” She was featured in that paper with a feature story screed against “modern art” as a Communist Plot! The entire thing was nuts and I knew it. I got a letter printed – which is why I’ll always have a soft spot for crazy Pat Buchanan (who probably had nothing to do with the letters to the editor, but forgive me my fantasies of Pat reading my youthful essay and at least admiring the prose) charging Schlafly with promoting an artistic aesthetic identical to that of Josef Stalin – and backed it up with some pretty good evidence. It was one of the high points of my mid-adolescence (which says more about my adolescence than I want to consider.) One of her minions wrote a reply to the effect that what I didn’t get was that the Communists promoted degenerate modern art in the West, while subjecting their own people to inspirational, representational art (aka “Socialist Realism”, but never mind!)
The fact that she’s still alive and actually turned her nutty obsessions into a relatively high-profile career has never ceased to amaze me. But Phyllis and I go way back…
Tony J
@El Cid:
Woah, wait a minute.
I’m the first to admit that I have a perceptual bias towards cute brunettes with great eyes and really nice mouths, but even given that I’d still have to conclude that anyone who saw those pictures and didn’t think Bella Abzug was Teh Hottie has something missing from their plumbing.
Is this one of those ‘lost in the mists of time’ jobs where past generations of conservatives played the “Attack their strengths” and “Repeat Attack Plan: ‘Don’t Believe Your Eyes’!” so succesfully that their decendents just use the meme without actually checking what they’re talking about?
Because, y’know, that’s one damned vivacious lady.
Catsy
@El Cid:
I think it’s even shallower than that. Think about it: obviously she was pretty easy on the eyes when she was young like in those B&W photos (hey, what can I say: I like full-figured Jewish women), so yes, it had to be a crack on her appearance sometime within the last 30-40 years, when she was visibly aging like pretty much any other human being.
But there are any number of much more well-known aging liberal/feminist women Schlafly could’ve used as her punch line, many of whom are already the subject of crass sexist jokes about their looks. Hillary Clinton, for starters: the quintessential conservative feminist hate magnet. Janet Reno. Roseanne Barr. Or Nancy Pelosi–hell, I love me some Nancy SMASH, but she does have a huge portfolio of scary or unflattering photos of her.
But instead of any of these or the many other low-hanging fruit–some of whom actually hold office and power now and would likely make better targets politically–Schlafly picks out the relatively obscure and extremely dated reference of Bella Abzug, for fuck’s sake.
Why her and not any of the others?
I contend that it’s because she has a funny name. “Bella Abzug”. To American ears, it’s jarring and ugly-sounding, like a name you’d give to the fat inkeeper or the main squeeze of the villain in a fantasy novel.
That’s how shallow and pathetic this joke is. It’s worse than “you don’t want to end up with a fat ugly feminist like so-and-so”, it’s “you don’t want to end up with a fat ugly feminist with a funny name”.
Death Panel Truck
Phyllis Schlafly: 1972 called. It wants you back.
Catsy
@Fanshawe:
Holy crap, tell me about it. If my other half could replace my income, you bet your ass I would quit my job to stay home and do the housework and child duties. Faster than you can say “two weeks notice” and “AFK, dishes”.
wrb
@Catsy:
Naw.
It is because they were the poles of what it meant to be female- at a certain moment in time.
It is a cattiness born long ago.
geg6
@Catsy:
I agree about the name thing. It’s a “foreign” sounding name, kinda Jewish and definitely commie.
They would have done that to Gloria Steinem, too, but she doesn’t fit the “ugly feminist lesbo” meme and her name just isn’t foreign commie Jew enough. Hell, Gloria looks better at 78 than most women do ever.
http://images.search.yahoo.com/r/_ylt=A0PDoS.KOn9PMAgAiC2jzbkF;_ylu=X3oDMTBtdXBkbHJyBHNlYwNmcC1hdHRyaWIEc2xrA3J1cmw-/SIG=12sgj6bhi/EXP=1333766922/**http%3a//nymag.com/daily/intel/2007/11/gloria_steinem_remebers_norman.html
And when we were young:
http://www.northernsun.com/Gloria-Steinem-2×3-Magnet-%283601%29.html
Shawn in ShowMe
In Schafly World, The Duke is still #1 at the box office, Pat Boone is still topping the charts and real ladies know how to put aspirin between their knees.
PIGL
@CardinalRed: well, it would depend on what my great grandmother had done with her life, wouldn’t it. My grandmother, for example, was a pretty good source of advice, rest her soul.
There’s no need to be all ageist and sexist here, because it is neither her age or sex that is the source of that withered old hag’s crazy ideas. It her diseased right winged brain that is the fault, coupled with early child abuse in the form of religious and group-oriented indoctrination.
asiangrrlMN
@El Cid: Wow. She’s hot. And, she was NOT ugly as an older woman (I Googled it). But, more to the point, pot, kettle, Phyllis!
@Yutsano: Love ’em. She definitely had a distinct style.
@Omnes Omnibus: Right here, big boy!
This was at the Citadel? I really hope the female cadets punched Phyllis in the neck before she left.
El Cid
@Death Panel Truck: 1972 when asked for comment said it clearly was some sort of prank call, ’cause it never wanted Schafly in the first place.
Fanshawe
@Catsy:
I was lucky enough to marry a doctor, so I’m living the dream! Or will be in a few months anyway.
Chet
@Catsy: If that’s the case, then pot-kettle-black, because “Phyllis Schlafly” is hardly a name that flows gracefully from the tongue, IMO. It sounds like a fucking sneeze.
shortstop
@wrb: I agree. She just hasn’t upgraded her points of reference. About, uh, anything.
les
@j:
I really like a couple of the Schlafly beers, but I’ve hated Phyllis for 40 years and I can barely bring myself to buy the beer. What a hag.
John Dillinger
Hard to believe she is related by marriage to Tom Schlafly, the StL beer guy.
xian
@dmsilev: conservapedia is like a perpetual Poe’s Law machine
Interrobang
I detect just a little bit of “because Jewy-Jewy-Jew-Jew” in Schlafly’s hate-on for Abzug.
Me, I’m a big fan of women who can rock awesome hats. For those of us in the Commonwealth, it’s the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee this year, too.
rrnusa
A unique opportunity has presented itself in the 2012 Presidential election for women to make known their political power. This opportunity has never been available before and may not ever be available again and we should not let this opportunity go by.
Americans Elect has acquired a spot on the national ballot for the November election and yet they have as of to date not been able to qualify a single candidate according to their own requirements. A seeded candidate must have 1000 support clicks in 10 different states for a total of 10,000 support clicks. A non-seeded would need 5000 from 10 different states for a total of 50,000 support clicks. They only have 3 weeks left to get someone qualified. As you know this is all done online at the Americans Elect web site http://www.americanselect.org. Signing up is simple and free and showing support is even easier. You can nominate anyone you wish and support as many as you choose.
They would like to have six qualified candidates to take to the AE online convention being held in June, from which a ticket will be selected for the November ballot spot.
With the organization and network of the various women’s groups and pac’s working together I can easily see them being able to inform and activate their memberships via the internet in the span of days or weeks and produce not just 1 woman candidate but have all 6 of the AE candidates be women candidates, each with the required support clicks. 1000 women or supporters of woman from each state showing support is a small number.
Now this does not mean that in November any one must vote for the AE candidate by any means. The point would not so much be about electing a President but rather to show the two parties and all others the power of the woman’s vote and the very real effect on government leadership that vote has.
I would recommend the following names as the quickest and easiest to put forward. Many already are on the leader boards at Americans Elect.
MICHEALENE RISLEY
ELIZABETH WARREN
HILLARY CLINTON
OLYMPIA SNOW
SHEILA LEE JACKSON
KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND
DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ
SHEILA BAIR
I am sure there are many others to suggest that would be as good or better but that is what I see at AE and is a starting point.
With the power of organization and the technology of the internet I could see Women across this country catapulting all 8 of these names overnight into nomination status and have press victories to share for parties and people to see all the way to November and beyond.