The Hulu series reminds us that Phyllis Schlafly’s greatest strength was toughness without anger
Ann Coulter knows the debt she owes to Phyllis Schlafly. Not long after the premiere of the FX-on-Hulu series “Mrs. America,” which centers on the late conservative activist, Coultera 2002 CSPAN clip in which she explained why Schlafly was her role model. The Illinois housewife turned political icon was a “brilliant communicator,” Coulter said, who mobilized an army of grassroots activists and stopped a steamrolling Equal Rights Amendment in its tracks.
“She knew that to win people over, she needed to show some respect to her opponents,” says Critchlow, whose book,“And if she came across as dismissing them, or looking like their arguments were just completely foolish and that they were idiots, she wouldn’t win people over.” But by 2014, after getting a PhD in religious studies from the University of Pittsburgh—her dissertation was on the marketing of prosperity gospel by preachers like Joel Osteen—Meister found that her political views had shifted. And when she decided to pursue a career in TV commentary, and met with talent agents who could pitch her to news and cable networks, they uniformly told her that her only path forward was to pitch herself as a firebrand conservative.
On April 15, 1973, on William F. Buckley’s public affairs show “Firing Line,” Schlafly debated a “libber” opponent, National Organization for Women vice president Ann Scott, who was armed with a torrent of logic and a list of legal decisions that summarized the state of women’s rights. Schlafly didn’t have a law degree at the time . Still, she projected erudition, balancing a big stack of papers on her lap and holding up a legal encyclopedia called American Jurisprudence.
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